I lived in Manhattan, in the upper West Side. I remember people claiming that the neighborhood had been discovered (roughly the area between 72nd St.…

The afternoon sun sheds soft light on a cold landscape of inky trees and shorn shrubbery. Stark though it be, this last day of 2025…

My husband and I had a pleasant weekend in store. We were driving to Chattanooga to attend a performance of Handel’s Messiah. The pale winter…

The Saturday after Thanksgiving is festive: shoppers, diners, and small talk with friendly strangers. As is the case for so many, I love this time…

Autumn provokes tender memories. During an unusually swift October, I observed the dried-out greens from late summer transform into the dazzling panorama of drifting leaves…

The oft repeated phrase, “fall back/spring ahead,” denotes the contrast between the approach of dark, shortened days to the advance of bright, lengthened ones. While…

When I was a young adult, the malady of that era was called often, “An Age of Anxiety,” something that resulted from the post-modern age…

We all deal with frustration in our lives. We live in an imperfect world where our best laid plans do not always come to fruition.…

The summer of 1972 came at the end of my unexceptional Junior year in a Christian college in New York. I found myself in Westchester…

The day began with nothing to distinguish it from any other. I enjoyed my usual, strong (with a touch of cinnamon), black coffee, as consciousness…

The day started out as an ordinary Friday. In fact, the sun was shining as it softened the hard, Connecticut snow. That morning, at Sandy…

I am not referring to the 1980 film, Ordinary People with Mary Tyler Moore. That movie was a depiction of an upper middle-class family, led…

The sound of a distant airplane fills me with a sense of mystery as the position of being in a giant airliner, neither here nor…

Jeremiah 29:11 is cited often as a message of encouragement. Sadly, many people memorize this tender verse in isolation. It is important to view the…

I walked into Starbuck’s and ordered a light lunch. The barista was an engaging young woman who added, “Have an amazing day”. As I collected…

“Thank God It’s Friday” became such a mantra during the 1980s that it spawned a chain of restaurants with that name. I was in seminary…

We’ve all seen them: well-dressed women sitting in neat rows of cushioned chairs, listening to a hyper-ventilating speaker walking around, next to, but rarely behind…

It was a warm, breezy evening in Glendale, Arizona. I had just completed another lecture in a course, “American Intellectual History,” as an adjunct instructor…

For years I have been appalled by what I have observed in many evangelical circles: an emergence of what I call a cult of celebrity…

The sanctuary was hushed with expectancy. The lights were low; a tall Christmas tree stood in the shadows. The orchestra began the moving overture of…

The hour was late, easily after midnight, and I had just gone to bed. I made myself comfortable with propped up pillows as I was…

I was attending an old Presbyterian church in a busy southwestern city. I had completed an M.Div. (Master of Divinity) degree years before. That degree…

He was a tall man, in possession of very long legs. Bill Fry was a popular professor in the English Department of the small, Christian…

The traffic was typically heavy on that April afternoon as I drove to the doctor’s office. As her practice, one she shared with one other…

Victor Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning more than sixty years ago. In it, the concentration camp survivor describes the horrors of that time in…