To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. Eight summers ago, my two brothers and I embarked on the trip of a lifetime. Over the course of six days we traveled 100 miles in wooden dories on the turbulent Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. It was a blast. We experienced about 30 sets of rapids, three of which at the time… Read more »
For the four weeks leading up to and going beyond Easter, let’s take a look at the life of Peter. Because he’s so often at the center of both the brightest and darkest moments in the Gospels, he has always been a source of hope and inspiration for those endeavoring to follow Jesus. “But when he saw the wind, he… Read more »
For the four weeks leading up to and going beyond Easter, let’s take a look at the life of Peter. Because he’s so often at the center of both the brightest and darkest moments in the Gospels, he has always been a source of hope and inspiration for those endeavoring to follow Jesus. A man appeared one day at the… Read more »
Right now, according to the Doomsday Clock, we’re just 100 seconds from Armageddon. A group of researchers established The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947 to help alert humanity to the perils of atomic age weaponry. Very few people paid attention until 1949, when the group invented the metaphor of a clock ticking ominously toward the extinction of human… Read more »
In July 1982, 33-year-old Larry Walters of Long Beach, California, pulled off one of the craziest stunts in aviation history. As a child Larry had longed to fly. But poor eyesight disqualified him from pilot training. Then he got an idea. Walters attached 45 helium-filled weather balloons to his lawn chair. He strapped himself in with a few sandwiches, a… Read more »
Throughout November we’re taking an in-depth look at Ruth, the little book that helped pave the way for God’s Messiah to come into the world. The common cold has proven to be uncommonly hard to defeat. For years, British scientists operated a research facility called the Common Cold Unit. It finally closed in 1989 without finding the elusive “cure” that… Read more »
After 18 months of saturation news coverage of the pandemic, the televised images have become predictable. We see COVID patients lying in ICU beds. Exhausted nurses. Vials of vaccine rolling off pharmaceutical assembly lines. Running tallies of the sick and dying. Exasperated politicians. Protesters chanting at workplaces and school board meetings. Then there are the needles – seemingly endless… Read more »
There’s a reason it’s called Thank God Ledge. By the time rock climbers have scaled most of Yosemite’s massive geological feature called Half Dome, the narrow ledge near the top is a welcome relief. Before the 20th century it didn’t seem possible that anyone could go straight up the granite face. Three climbers – working together and using all the… Read more »
If you have a desire to experience the world’s most violent weather, Oklahoma is the place for you. As journalist Michael Lewis notes in his book The Coming Storm, the National Storm Prediction Center in Norman, OK is “about as perfectly situated as an institution can be.” Masses of warm air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico routinely collide… Read more »
If there’s such a thing as the Most Disappointing Verse in the Bible, Revelation 21:1 just might be the one. John the evangelist reports a breathtaking glimpse of heaven in chapter 21 of the Bible’s last book. Verse four gets a lot of press, and deservedly so: “[God] will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more… Read more »