The bank sent me an overdraft notice on the checking account of one of my daughters. I encourage my college-age girls to monitor their accounts. Even so, they sometimes overspend.

What should I do? Send her an angry letter? Admonition might help her later, but it won't satisfy the bank. Phone and tell her to make a deposit? Might as well tell a fish to fly. I know her liquidity. Zero. Transfer the ...

Being completely conformed to the likeness of God's Son is something that we look forward to in the future, although the transformation is happening now gradually. Being adopted among many brothers is something that we have now. The minute you become a Christian, you have intimacy of relationship. You have an unconditional relationship. You become wealthy, because everything that Jesus Christ has ...

What does a six-year-old boy want for his birthday? Legos. A bicycle. Thomas the Train. A DVD of a recent movie that he will watch repeatedly. If he made a list, it would go well beyond this. But what if he could get more than this? What if he could get immeasurably more than he could ask or imagine? When Gabriel Hurles turned six, that's exactly what he got. The little boy was so focused on eating ...

In The Manger Is Empty, Walter Wangerin Jr. shares personal memories from past Christmases. In a chapter entitled "A Quiet Chamber," he recalls Christmas, 1944. That year, in the days leading up to Christmas Eve, Walter's father did the same thing he always did at Christmastime: he went into a room in the house, removed the outside door knob so the kids couldn't get in, and he decorated a Christmas ...

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shares this brief moment she shared with Holocaust survivor and author, Eli Wiesel:

Not long after September 11, I was on a panel with Eli Wiesel. He asked us to name the unhappiest character in the Bible. Some said Job, because of the trials he endured. Some said Moses, because he was denied entry into the Promised Land. Some said Mary, because she witnessed ...

John W. Fountain is a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was formerly a national correspondent for The New York Times. This is his testimony in the NPR series, "This I Believe":

I believe in God. Not that cosmic, intangible spirit-in-the-sky that Mama told me as a little boy "always was and always will be." But the God who embraced me when Daddy disappeared ...

We serve a God who created our humanity, weeps at the fall of our humanity, became our humanity, and is redeeming our humanity.

—Author Glenn Stanton

Max Lucado writes about a big, muscle-bound man named Daniel who was swindled by his own brother. He vowed that if he ever saw him again, he would break his neck. A few months later, Daniel became a Christian. Even so, he couldn't forgive his brother. One day, the inevitable encounter took place on a busy avenue. This is how Daniel described what happened:

I saw him, but he didn't see me. I felt my ...

What is our country's biggest problem? A lack of a father's blessing. The FBI studied the 17 kids who shot their classmates in towns like Paducah, Kentucky; Pearl, Mississippi; and Littleton, Colorado. All 17 shooters had only one thing in common: they had a father problem. I see it so much; it's just unbelievable. There's something about it when a man doesn't get along with his father. It makes him ...

The sentence still jumps out at me from the middle of an editorial in The Wall Street Journal. It's been half a decade since I read it, but it was one of those electric expressions that you can't forget: "People want to be lightly governed," the writer said, "by strong governments."

That's what you've wanted since you were a small child. You wanted your dad to be big and strong and able to do anything ...