In January, 2008, a story made the rounds about a 15-year-old girl in Australia named Demi-Lee Brennan. Brennan became the world's first known transplant patient to change blood types from O negative to O positive, taking on the immune system of her organ donor. At first the doctors assumed someone had made a mistake, because it's always been assumed that a change like that can't happen. Now they ...

Have you heard about the 2-D love phenomenon over in Japan? Pretty disturbing, yet also quite telling of the times in which we live.

The folks at Newsweek.com have discovered younger generations are fighting cancer with humor. Be advised: there is some spicy language in this one. I think it's worth a look, though, because I feel like there's something there to explore—some dots to connect about ...

One of the most remarkable and well-attested physical healings of someone I know personally happened to a fellow pastor named Kenneth Wallace. When I first became a pastor in 1975, he was the presbyter of the area in central Illinois that included our church, and he oversaw the interviews for my ordination. At that time he must have been in his mid to late fifties, and he struck me as a happy warrior: ...

In a 2009 article for Christianity Today magazine, author Jocelyn Green gave readers a glimpse into the lives of different military officers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder—with special attention given to the responsibility the church has in ministering to those officers. She writes:

Nate Self's military record was impeccable. A West Point graduate, he led an elite Army Ranger outfit ...

A note from Brian Lowery, managing editor: "News That Illustrates" is a new feature that we're adding to our weekly illustrations. Each week I'm going to offer links to ten, up-to-the-minute news articles that I feel have some real illustrative potential for you as a preacher. Enjoy!

July 20 was the 40th anniversary of man walking on the moon. The special occasion led to a spate of space-related stories, ...

My first visit to a health club was in the 1970s. Health clubs were new. My friend Frank told me he had a membership and that I could come with him as his guest for a workout.

When I met Frank at the club, we went into a room filled with weight machines. I'd never seen these things before in my life. Frank called it "the circuit." The idea was to spend a few minutes on each machine, exercising all ...

In his book Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, Atul Gawande recalls a patient he encountered during his final year of medical school. The older woman's complaint was simple and to the point: "I don't feel too good." She was achy, tired, and suffering from a mild cough, but she showed no signs of a fever, and her blood pressure was fine. Besides a high white blood cell count, she was fine. Gawande ...

The Power of Forgiveness is a collection of seven short stories that, taken together, reveal the limits, difficulties, healing qualities, and unforeseen effects an act of forgiveness can have in the lives of the people who give it. One of the stories focuses on Kathleen Lawler-Row, a professor of psychology who has conducted extensive research into the effects of forgiveness on the human body.

In this ...

The movie Blood Diamond depicts the world of "conflict diamonds" during the political and social turmoil of Sierra Leone's civil war in 1999. A Mende fisherman and a mercenary-turned-smuggler are on a quest to find a rare pink diamond, each hoping it will change his life.

Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) are at the site where the priceless diamond is buried. Solomon's ...

Every night on the news, we hear horrifying reports from Iraq. In a recent Breakpoint Commentary, Charles Colson shared this moving story about a U.S. triage facility doing its best to save the lives of two Iraqi insurgents:

The U.S. medical team moved heaven and earth to save their lives. One insurgent, however, was not going to survive unless he got 30 pints of blood…

The call went out for ...