Ann was meeting with her oral surgeon for a preliminary exam mdash a physician she rsquo d known for many years He asked her ldquo Do you have any questions rdquo She said ldquo Yes Did you go to church last Sunday rdquo Her question wasn rsquo t intended to be judgmental but simply to initiate a conversation about faith The surgeon had a less-than-positive church experience growing up and he hadn rsquo t gone back Because of Ann rsquo s question and their conversation he reconsidered the role of Jesus and church in his life When Ann later gave [... more]

When Mary Slessor sailed to the African nation of Calabar now Nigeria in the late s she was enthusiastic to continue the missionary work of the late David Livingstone Her first assignment teaching school while living among fellow missionaries left her burdened for a different way to serve So she did something rare in that region mdash she moved in with the people she was serving Mary learned their language lived their way and ate their food She even took in dozens of children who rsquo d been abandoned For nearly forty years she brought hope and the gospel to [... more]

As he neared the end of his life John Perkins had a message for the people he would leave behind Perkins known for advocating racial reconciliation said ldquo Repentance is the only way back to God Unless you repent you will all perish rdquo These words mirror the language of Jesus and many Bible characters Christ said ldquo Unless you repent you too will all perish rdquo Luke The apostle Peter said ldquo Repent then and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out rdquo Acts Much earlier in Scripture we read the words of another person [... more]

When the Mars rover Perseverance landed on that red planet on February those monitoring its arrival endured ldquo seven minutes of terror rdquo As the spacecraft ended its -million-mile journey it went through a complex landing procedure it had to do on its own Signals from Mars to Earth take several minutes so NASA couldn rsquo t hear from Perseverance during the landing Not being in contact was frightening for the team who had put so much effort and resources into the mission Sometimes we may experience our own times of fear when we feel we rsquo re not hearing [... more]

The sixth-grade basketball game was well underway Parents and grandparents were cheering on their players while younger brothers and sisters of the boys on the teams entertained themselves out in the school hallway Suddenly sirens blared and lights flashed in the gym A fire alarm had been tripped Soon the siblings came streaming back into the gym in panic looking for their parents There was no fire the alarm had accidentally been activated But as I watched I was struck by the way the children mdash sensing a crisis mdash unashamedly ran to embrace their parents What a picture of [... more]

Approximately ten Lego pieces are sold for every person on earth each year mdash more than seventy-five billion of the little plastic bricks But if it wasn rsquo t for the perseverance of Danish toymaker Ole Kirk Christiansen there wouldn't be any Legos to snap together Christiansen toiled away in Billund Denmark for decades before creating leg godt which means ldquo play well rdquo His workshop was destroyed by fire twice He endured bankruptcy and a world war that caused a shortage of materials Finally in the late s he landed on the idea for self-locking plastic bricks By the [... more]

In an orbit between Mars and Jupiter zooms an asteroid worth trillions and trillions of dollars Scientists say Psyche consists of metals such as gold iron nickel and platinum worth unfathomable amounts of money For now earthlings are not attempting to mine this rich resource but the United States is planning to send a probe in to study the valuable rock The promise of untold riches just out of reach can be both tantalizing and frustrating Surely in time there will be people who will champion the cause of reaching Psyche for its treasure But what about the prospect of [... more]

It was a warm summer day and my four-year-old granddaughter Mollie and I were taking a break from playing ball As we sat on the porch with our glasses of water Mollie looked out at the yard and said ldquo Look at the puddles of sunshine rdquo The sunlight was filtering through the thick foliage to create a pattern of light amid the dark shadows Puddle of sunshine Isn rsquo t this a beautiful image for finding hope in dark days In the midst of what can often be challenging times mdash when good news seems in short supply mdash [... more]

My friend Bill described Gerard an acquaintance of his as being ldquo very far from God for a very long time rdquo But one day after Bill met with Gerard and explained to him how God rsquo s love has provided the way for us to be saved Gerard became a believer Through tears he repented of his sin and gave his life to Jesus Afterward Bill asked Gerard how he felt Wiping away tears he answered simply ldquo Washed rdquo What an amazing response That rsquo s precisely the essence of salvation made possible through faith in Jesus rsquo [... more]

When you plug in your toaster you benefit from the results of a bitter feud from the late nineteenth century Back then inventors Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla battled over which was the best kind of electricity for development direct current DC like the current that goes from a battery to a flashlight or alternating current AC which we get from an electrical outlet Eventually Tesla rsquo s AC ideas powered through and have been used to provide electricity for homes businesses and communities around the world AC is much more efficient at sending electricity across great distances and proved [... more]

It was time to give the inside of our home a fresh new look But just as I rsquo d begun prepping a room for painting our state government announced it would be halting the sale of many home improvement items due to the COVID- pandemic As soon as I heard the announcement I rushed to the store and nabbed the essential materials You simply can rsquo t remodel without the proper supplies Paul had a bit of a remodeling project in mind when he wrote Ephesians But the changes he was talking about went far beyond superficial alterations Of [... more]

For fourteen years the Mars rover Opportunity faithfully communicated with the people at NASA rsquo s Jet Propulsion Laboratory After it landed in it traversed twenty-eight miles of the Martian surface took thousands of images and analyzed many materials But in communication between Opportunity and scientists ended when a major dust storm coated its solar panels causing the rover to lose power Is it possible that we can allow ldquo dust rdquo to block our communication with Someone outside of our world When it comes to prayer mdash communicating with God mdash there are certain things that can get in [... more]

When my friend Marge met Tami at a Bible study meeting she noticed that they seemed to have little in common But Marge befriended her and she learned a valuable lesson from her new friend Tami had never been to a Bible study and she was having a hard time understanding something the other women in the study talked about that God communicated with them mdash something she rsquo d never experienced She so desired to hear from God that she took action Later she told Marge ldquo I set aside an old wooden chair and every time I study [... more]

In early Charlie VanderMeer died at the age of For many decades he was known to thousands and thousands of people as Uncle Charlie the host of a national radio broadcast called Children rsquo s Bible Hour The day before Uncle Charlie slipped into eternity he told a good friend ldquo It rsquo s not what you know it rsquo s who you know Of course I rsquo m talking about Jesus Christ rdquo Even as he faced the end of his life Uncle Charlie couldn rsquo t help but talk about Jesus and the necessity for people to receive [... more]

Recently I read through a stack of World War II-era letters my dad sent to my mother He was in North Africa and she was in West Virginia Dad a second lieutenant in the US Army was tasked with censoring soldiers rsquo letters mdash keeping sensitive information from enemy eyes So it was rather humorous to see mdash on the outside of his letters to his wife mdash a stamp that said ldquo Censored by nd Lt John Branon rdquo Indeed he had cut out lines from his own letters Self-censoring is really a good idea for all of us [... more]