I remember an animated discussion with my high school freshman English teacher over the word awful. I insisted on using awe-full to describe something so exalted as to arouse reverence. She preferred that I stick with the word's common spelling and its usage to designate something dreadful.

We should have looked in the dictionary. My old Webster's lists as its first definition "inspiring awe; highly ...

We live in a fast-paced culture, but some things just ought to happen slowly.

The book Final Salute tells the story of Major Steve Beck, a U.S. Marine whose heart-wrenching task is to inform the nearest of kin when a Marine is killed in Iraq. Beck doesn't just break the sad news and then leave; for several days he may help the family through the process of the funeral. That includes supervising the ...

The Nativity Story is a drama that focuses on the period of Mary and Joseph's life during which they journeyed to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus.

In this scene, the wise men have arrived in Bethlehem at the place where Mary has given birth to Jesus. Mary, Joseph, and the baby have previously been joined by a group of shepherds who have come to worship the baby Jesus.

The scene begins with the approach ...

A few summers ago, we took a family vacation to Toronto. We'd never been there, and we didn't know what to see, but all the guidebooks said, "You have to go up the CN Tower, the world's tallest building and free-standing structure."

I didn't think that was a good idea, because I have a great fear of heights. Just the thought of being 1,815 feet above the ground made me queasy. But the kids said, "Aww, ...

Some churches specialize in generating emotion. The platform people are experts at moving worshipers to laughter or tears. Attenders gradually learn to evaluate the service in terms of the emotion they feel.

In time, however, the law of diminishing returns sets in. Prayers are offered in highly emotive style and bathed in background music. Stories have to get more dramatic, songs more sentimental, ...

In the fall of 2005, Oprah Winfrey entered her 20th season as the celebrated host of The Oprah Winfrey Show. In those two decades, she has amassed over $1.4 billion, assembled a U.S. television audience of more than 49 million viewers each week (not including her broadcasts in 122 other countries), and informed her viewers on matters ranging from genocide in Rwanda to the best-tasting oatmeal cookies. ...

As human beings, we pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk. Yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities—of building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.

For example, we agonize over the avian flu, which [as of December 2006] had killed precisely no one in ...

Here is something I began to feel after I had faith: the unexpected joy of living things. At some point, living things began to seem precious to me, and I wanted to pet them, hug them—babies and dogs and lizards, whatever. For me, the great fruit of belief is joy. There is a God, there is a purpose, there is a meaning to things, there are realities we cannot guess at, there is a big peace, you ...

Mark Galli tells the following story in his book Jesus Mean and Wild:

A group of Laotian refugees who had been attending the Sacramento church I pastored approached me after the service one Sunday and asked to become members. Our church had sponsored them, and they had been attending the church only a few months. They had only a rudimentary understanding of the Christian faith, so I suggested we study ...

In his book Jesus Mean and Wild, Mark Galli references his interview with Stephen Prothero in 1994. During that interview, Prothero said:

Christians traditionally, as they've shaped Jesus, have been worried about getting it wrong, including the Puritans. Americans today are not so worried. There isn't the sense that this is a life-and-death matter, that you don't want to mess with divinity. There's ...