I was finishing up a premarital counseling session for a wonderful young couple. We were only a few weeks away from the wedding, and we had already put the finishing touches on the service. As we came to the end of this last meeting, the groom-to-be blurted out, "I just have to say that I am so scared of this!" He suddenly had the undivided attention of his fiancée. He quickly added, "Oh no, ...

While working his way through seminary, pastor and author Ed Rowell took a job driving a school bus for kindergartners. Ed shares a story about a valuable lesson he learned from that experience—a lesson about the power of presence and a willingness to say the things God whispers into our hearts. The story begins with Ed meeting a memorable little boy named Ryan:

Several of the kids came from ...

I discovered the importance of pacing when running my first triathlon. I did all my training for the swim leg of the race in a pool. And my times were fantastic. But the Atlantic Ocean is no pool. I was confident going into the race. And so on the opening swim leg, I sprinted from the beach to the first buoy. I wanted to be at the front of the pack so I didn't have to embarrass everybody by swimming ...

Bee Movie centers on the life of Barry B. Benson—a maverick bee who is less than enthusiastic about taking his place in the hive as a life-long worker. When Barry takes an unauthorized trip into the human world, he makes a shocking discovery: humans are stealing the honey that bees work so long and hard to produce.

Incensed at the injustice, Barry files a lawsuit on behalf of all bees demanding ...

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 ...

Miss Potter tells the story of Beatrix Potter—well-known artist and author of several beloved children's books, including Peter Rabbit. In the following scene, Beatrix reacts to the death of her fiancée, Norman Warren. The two had become engaged in secret because of their differing social classes, and Beatrix was unable to be with him during his illness because her family had taken her away ...

Bill Broadhurst was running in the Omaha, Nebraska, Pepsi 10k, a race of 6.2 miles. Broadhurst, who is a Christian, is slowed by a brain aneurism he suffered as a young man, leaving him partially paralyzed on the left side. He wanted to finish the 10k despite this obstacle. He was determined to run because Bill Rogers, his hero, was in the race that day.

Rogers is a great runner and ran the race in ...

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I had the strangest feeling sitting there. The feeling was helplessness. There was nothing I could do. It had been taken care of. To insist on paying would have been pointless. All I could do was trust that what she said was actually true and then live in that—which meant getting up and leaving the restaurant. My acceptance of what she said gave me a choice: to live like it was true or to ...

Philosopher Emile Cailliet was born in a small French village near the end of the 19th century. His early education was committed to naturalism, leaving no room for God or supernatural intervention in human affairs. But his naturalistically inspirited studies in philosophy proved of little help during his front-line experiences as a lad of 20 in World War I. Confronted with the horrors of war, he ...

In February of 2006, eight coworkers at a Nebraska meatpacking plant contributed five dollars apiece to buy a pool of 40 Powerball lottery tickets. As wage earners at the plant, the men usually worked 60–70 hours a week and earned $9–10 an hour. This group, however, ended up winning the largest jackpot in U.S. history, and each person walked away with $15.5 million after taxes.

Amazingly, ...