“You’re good at playing the guitar,” I said to a new friend playing at the church I’d recently started attending. “Thanks,” he said. “That’s my ministry.” There was that word again. Ministry. I didn…

For centuries, people have been fascinated by the Holy Grail—the cup Jesus drank from at the Last Supper. The legends surrounding King Arthur and the knights of the round table obsessed over the search for the cup. They believed it had magical po…

As a child, I brought home a report card with all S’s, which stood for Satisfactory. My sister, who was five years older than me, had a mixture of A’s and B’s. I thought our report cards proved I was smarter because I had what I thoug…

Zoologists describe what they call “turtle dancing”—the charming behavior of loggerhead turtles when they are in the presence of food. The turtles tilt their bodies vertically, open their mouths, clap their front flippers, and spin ar…

It was my grandson’s eleventh birthday, and a group of family members gathered at a Mediterranean restaurant to celebrate. Before ordering, my son asked the birthday boy what he wanted. He reluctantly told his dad he’d like the salmon but k…

That afternoon Tim saw a herd of deer emerge from the woods and graze nearby. One doe seemed especially alert. Wondering if she was the fawn’s mother, Tim looked up a recording of a fawn’s distress cry on his mobile phone and played it loud…

The woman walked gingerly up each step to the church’s sanctuary for that night’s prayer service.  As she paused because of her pain or breathlessness, a man passing by said,  “One step at a time. That’s the only way y…

In 1869 construction began on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. Soon after work commenced, chief engineer Washington Roebling became very ill. His wife, Emily, pitched in to help. She studied his plans, revised specifications, and gave instructions…

“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.” These words, uttered by a character in C. S. Lewis’ book Out of the Silent Planet, depict the joy one has in reminiscing over cherished experiences in life. Though we rightly deli…

After Lam Wai Chan moved from his native Singapore to pastor a church in Japan, he panicked. The church had barely twenty members. In a nation known as a “missionary graveyard,” where about one percent of the nation’s people are Chris…