A few Sundays ago, I was heading home after preaching three times. I was tired and looking forward to opening my laptop and reading my favorite blogs—particularly ones focused on missional theology and leadership. Just then I received a text message from a friend. He was inviting me to a club to see a band with a number of non-Christians, including one I had been trying to build a relationship ...

In Darkness Is My Only Companion: A Christian Response to Mental Illness, Kathryn Greene-McCreight describes her tortured journey through ten years of extreme depression and bipolar disorder. Concerning the importance of Christian fellowship while in recovery, she writes:

This is why it is so important to worship in community—to ask your brothers and sisters in Christ to pray for you … ...

The Color Purple, based on Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, tells the story of a girl named Celie (played by Whoopi Goldberg), who grows up in the rural South. Fourteen-year-old Celie is forced to marry Albert Johnson (played by Danny Glover), a widower farmer who treats his teenage bride more like a slave than a wife. When Celie's sister, Nettie (played by Akosua Busia), comes for a visit, ...

He who labors ought to perform his task not for the purpose of ministering to his own needs but that he may accomplish the Lord's command, 'I was hungry and you gave me [something] to eat,' and so on…Everyone, therefore, in doing his work, should place before himself the aim of service to the needy and not his own satisfaction.

—Basil the Great, Greek theologian, one of the Cappadocian ...

If only adults showed as much sound judgment as an infant! Through a series of tests, Yale University's Infant Cognition Center has found that babies as young as six to ten months old know what's right and wrong. Researchers sat babies down in front of a roller coaster-like track to watch a cartoon-eyed wooden toy try to climb its way to the top of one of the hills. As the toy climbed, other toys ...

What makes someone between the ages of 13 and 24 happy is not what you might think, according to an extensive survey conducted by the Associated Press and MTV.

The results showed that spending time with family (73 percent) makes young people happiest. Nearly half of kids surveyed mentioned one of their parents as their hero, with mothers (29 percent) ranking higher than fathers (21 percent). After ...

The New England Journal of Medicine recently exposed another factor that contributes to obesity: a person's circle of friends. Statistics say it isn't long before a person of stronger discipline and a smaller waistline soon matches a larger friend's desire for food. In fact, the study found that the threat of obesity increases 57 percent if a person's friends are overweight.

Writer Virginia Stem Owens describes a Thanksgiving dinner she shared with her parents in a nursing home:

… The tables have been rearranged, end-to-end pilgrim-style, for the Thanksgiving feast, and my father and I take our places on both sides of my mother. Across from us sit Norman, the owner of the Christian music boom box, and James, a black man in a Mister Rogers cardigan who moves with ...

I inherited an old trunk that sat in my grandma's basement. It had belonged to the generation before, who had used it to bring their possessions across the sea from Sweden. It sits in my dining room. It smells a little musty, but I treasure it as a link to my heritage.

I was thrilled to receive the trunk, but even happier when I opened it and saw my bonus surprise. The bottom was lined with pages of ...

Certain ants in South and Central American rainforests will lie down in the potholes that stand between their army and food. Their bodies form a makeshift bridge, allowing other ants—sometimes numbering over 200,000—to make better time in getting to the source of nourishment.

This pattern in the life of ants was discovered through research done at England's University of Bristol. Researchers ...