I am increasingly convinced that if the Church is to live, and actually be alive, one of the reasons, maybe the most important and maybe the only reason, will be because we have taken up our place in the line of the generations of the faithful who came before us. It will be because we pray the prayer that Christ himself prayed when he walked among us and now longs to pray through us.

It will be because ...

Jeffrey H. Boyd, a medical doctor from Waterbury, Connecticut, writes:

My first wife, Pat, had diabetes, two heart attacks, bypass surgery, two strokes, went on dialysis, went blind, and had both legs amputated above the knee. She and I went every week to a healing service at our church. The clergy would lay hands on us and pray, while Pat and I cried uncontrollably. She was never healed. There was ...

On October 2, 2006, Charles Roberts walked into an Amish schoolhouse, dismissed all but ten young girls, and proceeded to shoot them before fatally shooting himself. Five of the girls died, five survived.

Six months after this tragic event, U.S. News and World Report returned to the scene of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, to find out how the Amish were coping, reporting their findings in the article, ...

As a teacher, I've overheard a lot of interesting things from my students. For instance, when Andrew—age 5 and very much into computers—was saying the Lord's Prayer, he did well till near the end when he said, "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from e-mail."

Friday Night Lights is based on the true story of the 1988 Odessa, Texas, high school football team. The Odessa Permian Panthers were led by a phenomenal running back named Boobie Miles (Derek Luke). With Miles playing, the Panthers won games easily and became the favorites to win the Texas Class A championship. The pressure from fans and family to win the most coveted trophy in Texas was relentless. ...

On January 6, 1999, rebels terrorized Freetown, Sierra Leone—murdering people, burning houses, and destroying our city. That evening the soldiers demanded that we come out of our houses. I went outside and stood by a gate. My family was terrified.

One rebel took his bayonet and pricked my stomach. "Do you own this house?" he asked.

"Well, I live here," I said.

As they marched me toward the back of my ...

The week before September 11, 2001, America's "Tuesday of Terror," 32-year-old Todd Beamer and his wife, Lisa, had spent a romantic getaway in Italy. The couple, both 1991 graduates of Wheaton College, returned home Monday rested and relieved to be reunited with their boys David, 3, and Andrew, 1.

But extended family time would have to wait. The next morning Todd, an executive with Oracle, had to be ...

My 4-year-old son Jonathan was trying to learn the Lord's Prayer. He learned by listening at church each Sunday.

On one Sunday as we were praying the Lord's Prayer, he could be heard above all the others, praying, "Our Father who art in Heaven, I know you know my name."

Nothing destroys like isolation. The men communicated—and sustained one another—by tapping through walls. The Hanoi Hilton, says ex-Air Force pilot Ron Bliss, "sounded like a den of run-away woodpeckers." The North Vietnamese never mastered the code, which laid out the alphabet on a simple 5-by-5 grid (omitting K, for which C was used). They tapped first the line, then the letter in that line. Thus ...

I like to fly fish, and when I do, I spend a lot of time alone. Even when I go on a trip with my son, we usually split up and take different parts of the river we're fishing. We come back in a few hours and swap stories. Even when I'm casting by myself, though, alone in front of a gentle riffle, enjoying some solitude with nature, I never feel alone. I know my son is fishing with me, even though ...