But in his spare time, a leading refugee pastor is mentoring immigrant ministry leaders across the country. Nobody naps on Saturdays in the Gatera family. If anyone has a right to, it’s Jean Pierre Gatera. Most weekdays the 43-year-old drives his wife, Appoline, to her tomato-packing job in Minneapolis at 6:30 a.m. Then he sends …
Jesus’ life began and ended in earthly fetters. Who better to understand ours? E. B. White once lamented, “To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year.” I wouldn’t want to argue with the beloved author of Charlotte’s Web. Yet I have an affection for Christmas wrapping precisely because it helped me …
Penned during the Civil War, Longfellow’s “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” is a carol for our age. The word apocalypse in the Greek means “uncovering,” and 2018 has been a year of uncoverings, of pulling back the curtain to reveal the worst things that people can do to one another. It has uncovered …
Both C. S. Lewis and Job held onto their faith when their worlds imploded. Now psychologists suggest clues to understanding how the mind endures in suffering. C. S. Lewis was briefly, but blissfully, married to his wife, Joy, before she died of cancer in 1960. He journaled through his grief, later published as the book, …
Finding common ground so that the Virgin Mary becomes less of a battleground. Many pastors feel nervous as the third Sunday in Advent, “Mary Sunday,” rolls around. What congregant will turn out to be suspicious of any unusual respect shown for her? What visiting Catholic will be mystified or put off by a cautious and …
God’s messengers can be both bombastic and surprisingly subdued. In my years of writing, I’ve not paid much attention to angels. I’ve never knowingly encountered one—knowingly, I say, for how could I tell for certain? Supernatural go-betweens, angels operate in the invisible world, rarely revealing themselves to those of us who occupy the material world. …
Which is one reason “the day of the Lord” figured so prominently in his letters. These days it is out of fashion to talk about judging and judgment. Ours is a much more “tolerant” age—or so we’re told. But as biblical scholars Matthew Aernie and Donald Hartley point out in The Righteous and Merciful Judge, …
How the question behind the recently controversial Christmas song stirs us to worship. With elegant simplicity, the apostle John writes, “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). It is clear, it is straightforward, and it is almost unbelievably strange. The conviction that God became man, not as a mere theological …
In the world’s most bookish country, evangelicals are taking up the ministry of translation. In the pitch dark of Christmas Eve in Iceland, after family dinner and unwrapping presents, the lights stay aglow for another special tradition: reading. Not just reciting the Nativity story or The Night Before Christmas; book lovers in the tiny Nordic …
Why history’s wisest figures have seen a connection between reading well and living well. When I was a young girl, I gathered up all my books from my bedroom, carried them downstairs into our finished basement, arranged them on a bookcase, and opened my own little library. I’d like to say I did this in …