Have you ever noticed that every superhero movie or TV show includes a moment when the villain nearly defeats the hero? It usually turns out that the villain has been playing...

Many young people in America view the modern church as judgmental, insensitive, and hypocritical. The popular perception of Christians is a finger-wagging crowd that believes discipleship involves following rules and castigating...

After her death in 1997, one of Mother Teresa’s spiritual directors revealed letters in which she described a decades-long “dark night of the soul,” a period during which she felt that...

There’s an old joke about a faithful disciple who is drowning in a flood. As the water rises, he prays, “God, I believe in you and I know that you’re going...

Naaman is a great man, a powerful and wealthy military commander. But he has leprosy. While his disease does not disable him, it must be distressing nonetheless. The slave girl, by...

Jesus got angry. This has always made sense to me intellectually, especially when I ponder the Incarnation, the confession that, in Jesus, God is truly and fully one of us. However,...

When a bad mood spreads we often think nothing good can come of it, and usually we’re right. But sometimes important—if uncomfortable—growth can only come from something as foul as a...

I hate forks in the road. I don’t care if it is a highway interchange or an intersection out in the country. Even if I know exactly where I am going,...

During my life I have usually employed the Psalms as personal devotional prayers. But the Psalms primarily function as the songbook of God’s people. When the community gathers, the members share...

The Psalms are a big deal. They’re strewn throughout the New Testament. Jesus quotes Psalm 22 from the cross. Monks chant them in chapels. You can’t overstate their importance in Judeo-Christian...