"The Lord is my Shepherd" is written on many more tombstones than lives.

—Dallas Willard, U.S. philosopher and writer (1935—)

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 ...

In his book Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, Atul Gawande recalls a patient he encountered during his final year of medical school. The older woman's complaint was simple and to the point: "I don't feel too good." She was achy, tired, and suffering from a mild cough, but she showed no signs of a fever, and her blood pressure was fine. Besides a high white blood cell count, she was fine. Gawande ...

By the time of his 22nd arrest—following a dramatic chase through Miami [that involved] many police cars and much shooting—John Sala had reached the end of the line. Guilty of the attempted murder of a policeman, aggravated assault, and grand theft, he was headed to jail for a long time.

But jail, of all places, turned out to be his saving grace…

Sent to a prison in Avon Park, Florida, ...

Around 7 p.m. on the evening of Friday, May 31, 1985, an F3-magnitude tornado swept through Beaver County, Pennsylvania, just north of Pittsburgh. We were at church for a meeting, and when we got word of the storm, we had no idea how bad it had been. When our meeting came to an end, we headed to the home of some friends just as we had planned on doing.

My friend is a surgeon, and when we arrived at ...

In his book Building a Church of Small Groups, Bill Donahue relays a story from his time as a part-time youth pastor while attending seminary. He was visiting a farm where two of his students lived, and their father decided to teach Bill a lesson:

He asked if I could help call in the sheep. I enthusiastically agreed. Sheep-calling was like preaching. We stood at the pasture fence, watching 25 sheep ...

On January 12, 2002, the [Tampa Bay Buccaneers] had suffered a crushing 31-9 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in the playoffs. Two days later, [head coach Tony] Dungy was fired.…He was now the former head coach of an NFL team.

"At that time in my life, it was hard to remember God's promise from Romans 8:28," Dungy says, "that all things work together for good to those who love Him. But I also ...

As a young mother, one Christmas brought Brenda Nixon to despair. Amid all the holiday stress, her husband's job was shaky and the grim possibility of no income depressed her. She writes:

Among my numerous responsibilities was teaching my three-year-old's Sunday school class at church. When I looked at the teacher's book, I saw that the lesson was on Jesus, the Good Shepherd. What! The Good Shepherd? ...

In Shepherd Leadership, authors McCormick and Davenport remind Christian leaders to allow for second chances and gently restore the fallen. They write:

Thomas Edison filed an impressive 1,093 patents with the U.S. Patent Office, and behind each one of those 1,093 successes lay hundreds and sometimes thousands of failures. Edison mastered the art of recovering from failure with lessons in hand and sought ...

Why do sheep have shepherds? Because it is the nature of sheep to stray and get in harm's way, whether that be from hungry wolves or steep canyons. For centuries, shepherds have used various methods—from staff to dog—to keep sheep from straying from the safety of their care.

In recent times, shepherds have turned to other, more sophisticated, methods. One method is a metal, hoof-proof grid ...