Articles

AS I TAUGHT, I tried to make eye contact with each of my students. Some drifted off to sleep, some seemed pleasantly attentive, and others looked as if they had swallowed Mexican jumping beans.

I LOVE ACTING. I wanted to participate in a play at my music school, in Hennef, Germany, and signed up for it.

My friend and I refer to it as my fight with the dog—the dog that lurked in the forest. But that's just our goofy way of describing the day last year when I crawled through a patch of poison oak in the woods behind my school.

I NEVER EXACTLY SAID YES TO HAVING A FAMILY. But I didn't say no either.

IT'S AN astonishing statement the prophet Isaiah made. "The wolf," he said, "also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

IT HAD gotten to the point where I didn't even want to go to church. Faced with the challenge of a huge and nearly empty church building, our membership had grown increasingly contentious.

THE KINDS of calls I respond to as a volunteer chaplain with the county sheriff's department don't typically involve crimes of such severity. In fact, I'm mainly there for the officers—to provide support and a listening ear.

THIS MIGHT sound like a radical concept, but here it is: You and God are one. Not just related, not just connected.

AVID CAMPERS and those (like me) with wood-burning furnaces know that building a proper fire doesn't happen instantaneously. But with patience and persistence, a lone ember, or the flame of a single match, can be coaxed into a cheerful, crackling blaze.

WORDS ARE POWERFUL. They shape thinking and change lives.