Like all Singaporean men, I had to serve in the country’s armed forces when I turned eighteen. To be honest, I approached the conscription, which lasted two-and-a-half years, most reluctantly. Like many other young men, I tried to do the minimum,…

It’s fascinating to see your own heart. Recently, I did. Chest pain led me to see a doctor, who ordered tests that allowed me to see that my heart has calcium buildup. More than I should have. Atherosclerosis, the doctors call it: hardening of th…

As Douglas Kent, a landscape architect, toured a charred Los Angeles neighborhood after the city’s raging 2025 wildfires, he encountered a shocking surprise—trees, alive and green right next to melted cars and burned buildings. Many of them…

I opened my online banking app and discovered two withdrawals over $500 each, which I hadn’t made. Panicked, I called the bank and discovered my identity had been stolen. With the bank’s help, I was able to reinstate my good standing, but t…

In nineteenth-century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins’ sonnet “God’s Grandeur,” Hopkins celebrates the countless ways creation is “charged”—intensely filled—with “the grandeur of God.” In vivid ima…

In late spring each year, I plant cucumber seeds in our garden. The seeds produce leaves quickly, but it takes time to see the fruit. In fact, one summer after I watered the seeds and waited, I questioned whether I’d get any cucumbers at all. I t…

In 1962, Joanne Shetler and Anne Fetzer made an arduous trek by bus and foot into the rugged mountains of the Philippines to share the gospel with people who’d never heard of Jesus.
For five years, they translated Scripture into the people&rsquo…

As soon as I jumped into the pool, my goggles filled with water, and I could barely see. Despite having no formal swimming instruction, I slowly persevered for the two laps of a race I had entered on a whim. As a teenager, it was an embarrassing experi…

In the early 1900s, successful steel businessman Charles Schwab decided to build perhaps the most lavish mansion in New York City. Completed in 1906, his Riverside Drive estate took its inspiration from French chateaus and spanned an entire city block …

After Joni Eareckson Tada’s mother died, Joni thought about Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians where he described how our bodies are like “jars of clay” that hold the treasure of Christ’s presence. She mused about a t…