Recently I spoke with a friend named Carol (name changed) who had just returned from a difficult ocean cruise. She works for an organization that was helping to sponsor the getaway for a group of more than 1,000 people. In the middle of winter, Carol flew with her colleagues from Chicago to Mobile, Alabama, where they were to board the ship. As she and hundreds of other excited vacationers waited ...

In the first half of 2009, news reports poured in of pirate vessels attacking vital shipping lanes along the coast of Somalia in southern Africa. Entire shiploads of cargo were held for ransom by pirates, delayed severely, or even lost at sea.

Amid that chaos, Mark Wilson was learning the ropes for his new job as logistics coordinator for the U.S. headquarters of Africa Inland Mission (AIM)—a ...

Luis Palau, the Argentine-born international evangelist, describes how God expanded his ministry:

...

And the Lord gave me a verse. It sounds a bit bombastic, sort of big-headed, so I don't like to quote it in public. But to paraphrase, the Lord basically says, "I will open up nations to you." I took it personally, as a word from the Lord, and I wrote in the flyleaf of my Bible, "1966 (February, I ...

After spending Thanksgiving with family in Seattle, Washington, the Kim family began their long journey back to San Francisco on November 24, 2006. James and Kati, along with their daughters Penelope (4) and Sabine (7 months), traveled south on Interstate 5 until late in the evening, intending to exit onto Highway 42 and spend the night in an upscale lodge. But they missed their turn.

Instead of backtracking, ...

Reasons drivers ages 18 or older get lost while driving:

• Bad directions: 47 percent
• Unclear, missing highway signs: 45 percent
• Detours: 38 percent
• Confusing maps: 21 percent
• Auto distractions: 13 percent

We had an incident while Jet Skiing off the coast of Wellington [during our family vacation to New Zealand]. I had taken the Skis out by myself for a few wild and wide-open runs just to make sure everything would be okay. Then I came back and got Mariah. We were having a blast. Wind in our faces, water breaking in every direction, moving freely at breakneck speed. It was exhilarating. It was nothing ...

While attending Magdalen, one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England, C. S. Lewis converted to theism in the spring of 1929, thus setting the stage for his eventual conversion to the Christian faith in 1931. He describes his conversion in his book, Surprised by Joy:

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even ...

In his book Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer, a Quaker, tells the story of how God used Palmer's friends to shape his vocational path in a significant way. Palmer had been offered the opportunity to become the president of a small educational institution. He was certain the job was for him, but he honored the tradition of the Quaker community, which is to call on a dozen trusted friends to engage ...

Several years ago I was a part of a small group with a friend who was working with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Georgetown University. As we shared prayer requests at the end of one of our meetings, my friend said their ministry needed a computer, and I said I'd pray for him. I started praying that God would provide a computer, and then I felt as if God interrupted me. It's hard to describe ...

In his book In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, Mark Batterson talks about the joy that comes through unexpected things—a lesson he learned while on vacation with his family in Orlando, Florida:

One morning we were sitting at a stoplight in our rental van. The light turned green, and the car in front of us didn't go, so I decided to give them a little "love tap" on the horn. But when I hit ...