By Abram Van Engen
What does it mean to contemplate whatever is true, honest, just, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy? It means to live and do them from day to day.
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By Meredith Liu
When I was growing up, my mother would sometimes recite Philippians 4:8 to me before I left for school in the morning. At fifteen years old, I distinctly remember rolling my eyes at the scripture.
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By Alex Siemers
Universities are increasingly anxious places. Even before the pandemic’s onset, many were ringing the alarm bells due to rising levels of anxiety and depression among college students. And the past two years (yes, it’s been two years) have just accelerated those trends.
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By Stephanie Wormleighton
I can still picture the first time I told a stranger that I wanted to go to law school. I was in a swanky San Francisco wine bar with a dutiful-but-bored alumnus of a local program, and he asked the natural networking question: why law school? I don’t remember exactly what I said first, but I do remember what I said second—I’ve repeated it many times since.
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By Rob Krosley
It’s hard to remember the last time I used the word “noble” in an earnest fashion.
Nobility, even as an abstract concept, tends to induce winces or eyerolls from most people today. The idea of nobility (or even honor, as this word is translated in the ESV) often seems to suggest the connection of power or position with virtue. But since power is built into the definition, it becomes hard to think of nobility as a virtue.
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By Sara Flores
Maybe it was growing up in the shadow of family members who accomplished impressive things. Maybe it was receiving praise at an early age for overachieving in school. Maybe I’m just a competitive person. Regardless of the reason, I have spent a lot of my life, especially my academic life, trying to outdo myself.
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By Ben Wormleighton
What do you see in me?
There are many “you”s in our context — colleagues, students, collaborators, administrators — who see us. What do they see in us? Uncertainty? Comfort? Drive? Compassion? An inner Christ-man bubbling to the surface?
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By Megan Burgess
In my profession as a pelvic health physical therapy clinician, I do not dwell in any conventional sense of beauty or loveliness. Often my patients are hurting and in need of help, battling strong adversaries and failing.
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by Chris Sommer
The door to the hospital room was propped open, so I could immediately see the congregation member lying in the bed. Although it was mid-afternoon, the room was dark; the lights were turned out and the curtains were mostly closed. Lester was awake. Hospitals are wonderful for many reasons, but getting sleep is not one of them.
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By Eric Stiller
In the movie Stranger Than Fiction, Will Farrell portrays an IRS agent named Harold Crick, who one morning hears inside his head the voice of an English woman narrating the story of his life. After the initial shock, he becomes accustomed to it – until the day she announces his imminent death. “What to do?” Harold wonders.
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By Nii Addy
“Oh, that’s just not right!” Maybe you’ve just witnessed a poster-worthy dunk on tv, with the commentator exclaiming this phrase. Or maybe a friend is being teased mercilessly, and you say it in their defense. Or perhaps you’ve heard the phrase in a far more serious context.
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By Asher Gelzer-Govatos
I’ve been trying out a new discipline lately. Every morning, after I stagger out of bed and secure some coffee, I do three things: I pray a rosary, I read a chapter from the Bible, and I spend as much time as I can justify reading a novel for pleasure.
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By Katie Nix
I don’t know about you, but these days I find myself doing a lot more cursing. In my defense, we are still in a pandemic trying to navigate school and friendships and vaccines and social justice and church and family and... Do you see now why I may sometimes let a word slip out?
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By Naomi Kim
When I was nine or so, I began to think I might have a superpower. I had just begun the habit of taking a book along with me wherever I went, and I discovered—to my delight and surprise—that I was capable of reading while I walked. In Walmart, trotting along after my mother with my head buried in a book, I marveled at the fact that I could read and still see the stocked shelves and ambling shoppers around me out of the corners of my eyes. It was amazing. Surely this was some kind of special ability.
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By Sabra Engelbrecht
As I sit down to write this, I’m surrounded by the familiar buzz of my favorite spot for coffee and conversation. Working in ministry, I am often found not in an office or behind a computer, but out in the world meeting with people, hearing their stories, discovering their gifts and passions, and inviting them to a life with Christ.
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By Hannah Wakefield
“Batter my heart!” my professor exclaimed as she pounded her fist on the whiteboard. It was the first day of our poetry unit in my college Introduction to Literary Analysis class, and my professor was beating a lesson into the brains of twenty brand new English majors using the opening lines of a sonnet by early modern poet John Donne…
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By Abram Van Engen
My toddler, Hendrik, has recently reached the Age of Why. Any statement, at any time, can get the same response: “But why, Daddy?” Finish your dinner. Why? Put the blocks away. Why? Time for bed. Why? And every answer, of course, gets a why in response. You need to nourish your body; we need to clean the floor; you need your sleep—why, why, why? It is adorable and annoying all at once.
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