When was the last time you found yourself in distress? Perhaps you experienced a painful injury or endured an illness. Maybe your were overcome with fear and anxiety because something you value was threatened. Perhaps a loved one died and…
Have you ever felt unwanted or unneeded? You may be a single person who faces another lonely night, a spouse who is met with cold indifference instead of warm affection, a ministry leader who…
Mary Sidney Herbert and the Poetic Depth of Her Psalter Mary Sidney was one of the most influential women of the Elizabethan age and received high praises for her writing skills. Forgotten for many centuries, she has recently been recognized…
Recently, a Reformed brother told me that he was nearly driven by depression to suicide due to years of wrongful, incessant attacks upon him and his wife by other family members teaming up with the government. He confessed if he…
It had been a long, hot summer. The heat wave outside seemed to match the heat wave in my own heart of anger, chaos, disappointment, fear, grief, insecurity, loneliness, and physical pain. One night things seemed particularly bad. I…
An old spiritual laments, “Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen, nobody knows my sorrows.” A modern rock song languishes, “You don’t know how it feels to be me!” But Jesus does. In Matthew 26:36-46, Jesus’s agonizing, lonely prayers in Gethsemane…
Radegund of Thuringia – Giving Refuge to Women in Violent Times In 531, an army of Frankish soldiers invaded the Kingdom of Thuringia (in today’s France), sacked the palace, killed the royal family, and took the royal children back to…
John Bertram Phillips – A Bruised Reed Firmly Planted Some know him as the author of Your God Is Too Small, an influential book that challenged a complacent generation to rediscover and cherish the God of Scriptures. Others remember…
“But the fruit of the Spirit is… joy.” Joy, that ultimate of teleological pursuits. It is the reason we exist. What is the chief end of man? It is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.[1] More than mere…
Catharine Brown – Cherokee Missionary and Teacher When Catharine Brown arrived at the Brainerd School, the missionaries thought she wouldn’t last long. Beautiful and proud, she carried herself with gravity and reticence, as it was fitting for the daughter…
