Romans 5: 1-11 (links validated 5/26/25a)

In her brilliant book, When We Fly Away, Alice Hoffman imagines what Anne Frank’s life was like before she began keeping her famous diary. In one scene Anne’s father Pim insists his friend Charlie Straus will arrange for the Franks to flee the Netherlands. ‘We’ll go to New York or Boston,’ her father vowed. ‘It’s only a matter of time.’ ‘And then on to California?’ Anne said in a small voice. It was the way you said things when you didn’t really believe in them anymore. ‘Then wherever we please,’ Pim said. “Her dear father, who was always so kindhearted and generous, who believed in the best in people, now couldn’t look at his own daughter for fear she’d see the truth in his eyes. She saw it anyway. Nothing was certain. ‘We can hope,’ Pim said.” Hoffman then closes the scene by poignantly noting, “No one could argue with that. Hope was all they had (italics added) now.”

I stumbled across a website recently—whyimcatholic.com. The name says it all. It’s a place where people from every background post their stories, sharing what led them to the Catholic faith. Fair warning: if you check it out, it’s addictive. You read one testimony, then another, and before you know it, an hour has passed. What struck me most were the stories from people who once called themselves atheists—folks who didn’t just drift from faith, but ran the other way, convinced there was nothing out there. And yet, somehow, they ended up here. One of those stories belongs to Jennifer Fulwiler. For most of her life, Jennifer believed there was no God—no meaning to any of it. Things like heroism or love? Just tricks of biology, neurons firing in the brain. Christianity? A fairy tale. She traces her skepticism to her father, but, to be fair, he hadn’t raised her to be an atheist so much as he’d raised her to chase the truth. “Never believe something because it’s convenient or it makes you feel good,” he’d say. “Ask yourself: Is it true?” That question—Is it true?—followed her. It showed up quietly: first when she fell in love with her husband Joe (himself a Christian, but not exactly practicing), and then again when she had her first child. Holding her newborn son, she ran up against something she couldn’t explain away—something that felt bigger, deeper—transcendent. Maybe, she thought, there really is more to life. Maybe the spiritual realm isn’t just wishful thinking. A few months later, Jennifer picked up a book by a former atheist who’d become Christian. She expected to disagree with him, but she respected that he based his beliefs on reason, not just feelings. For the first time, Jesus wasn’t just a cartoon figure people used to prop up their own ideas. He was a real person, someone who changed history. She writes:...

Last week I had a great opportunity, one that I will cherish forever, which was attending the Frozen Four National Championship for hockey here in St. Louis, where my family and I live. My son is a massive hockey fan, something that he's been looking forward to, but even more than that, he is a massive Boston University fan. So, when we got the opportunity to go to this hockey game, he was beyond excited. We went through the fan fest, and he was high-fiving everyone around him, every Boston University fan that he could find. He was chest bumping and congratulating and getting the opportunity to build camaraderie and connect. As we went from this fan fest into the game, my son's excitement continued to build. It got so much to the point where his smile was exploding off of his face. But what I did not know and did not plan was where we bought our tickets. I went on Stubhub and I got the cheapest tickets I could find in the best section that I could find. But what I didn't realize was that I had placed my son and I right in the heart of the Western Michigan University fan section or student section: the OPPOSING section of where my son was hoping to be! And as we walked up, I watched the realization hit his face as we went up the stairs and he saw Broncos uniforms everywhere. Not a piece of red in sight! He was terrified and he was frustrated. He was nervous about what was going to happen. His expectations shifted. And it was pretty fun - we got up there and we got to stand next to some people, and the fans did their whole chant and they did all these things. And initially, he was again taken aback. He was frustrated, he was kind of terrified of what it was. We even talked about what would happen if we went and sat somewhere else. But the unexpected happened to me, and happened to him, as I watched. His fear, his trepidation, his uncertainty about how this event would go started to shift as he ingratiated himself to the community around him...

always good insights!

always good insights!

Leo is a young man in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Andrew Grossman’s book The One Man. His fellow captive is a famous scientist named Alfred. Alfred tells Leo, ‘We must continue to have hope. Where there is hope, there is life. And where there is life … there is more to learn, isn’t that right?’ ‘Well, here’s to hope, then,’ Leo toasts. He lifts his teacup and hands it back to Leo. ‘And here’s to more to learn,’ Alfred responds as he takes a last sip of tea. ‘Where our true hope lies. Are we agreed?’ ‘Why don’t we just leave it at hope, shall we?’ Leo replies.’

In her book, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, Eliza Griswold tells the story of James Movel Wuye. He’s a Nigerian pastor who works alongside his former bitter enemy, Imam Muhammad Nurayan Ashafa in the city of Kaduna to change the way Nigeria’s Muslims and Christians view each other. During the eighties and nineties, the two leaders taught thousands of their young followers people to kill. The imam’s followers even lopped off the pastor’s arm with a machete more than a decade ago. Now, however, they are partners in an effort to foster unity among Nigerian youth. Yet James and Muhammad remain deeply devoted to both their faith and the salvation of each other. The imam, in fact, says, “I want James to die as a Muslim, and he wants me to die as a Christian.” In working for reconciliation, the pastor and imam are acting a bit like God.

In his book Whistling in the Dark, Frederick Buechner quotes a young colleague who’d said, “’There are two kinds of Christians in the world. There are gloomy Christians and there are joyful Christians’.” Buechner adds, “There wasn’t the shadow of a doubt which kind he preferred with his smile as bright as his clerical collar, full of bounce and zip and the gift of gab, and there is little doubt as to which we all prefer. “And why not? Joy is at the end of it, after all. Astonishment and joy are what our faith finally points to, and even Saint Paul, that in a way gloomiest of Christians, said as much though he was hardly less battered than the Jesus he preached by the time he had come through his forty lashes less one, his stonings and shipwrecks and sleepless nights. “Yet at the end, licking his wounds in a Roman lockup, he wrote, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice.’ But it is at the end that he wrote it. Rejoice is the last word and can be spoken only after the first word. The sheltering word can be spoken only after the word that leaves us without a roof over our heads, the answering word only after the word it answers.”

The unlikelihood of giving one’s life for another person is part of what makes what happened outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania on 9/11 such a dramatic part of American lore. It’s a startling story that those who survived that ghastly day will never forget. Americans deeply treasure it in part because United Flight 93’s passengers gave their lives not only for their friends, but also for strangers like all of us. In fact, they let death rip them away from those they loved for people they’d never met. It’s almost too dreadful to even imagine what would have happened if terrorists had succeeded in flying United Flight 93 into the White House or Capital. I suspect that the United States would still be recovering had those passengers not given their lives for their fellow Americans on 9/11. Just imagine how much more terrible our plight would be had Jesus not died for naturally ungodly sinners like us.

In Deep Down Faith, Plantinga writes about Tom, a talented if young and inexperienced thief. He isn’t just what Plantinga calls “smart, quick, and daring.” Tom also has a job that gives him plenty of chances to use his “skill.” He works as an assistant school custodian. He washes tabletops, sweeps floors, and shoves desks back into orderly rows. While he’s at it, Tom also raids students’ lockers and teachers’ desks from which he steals things. Over time both students and teachers became increasingly irritated by their losses. While most missing amounts were small, once Tom stole the sizable proceeds from candy and ice cream sales at a basketball game. Another time a tenth grader who’d left all her birthday money in her locker found it gone on Monday when she returned to school. Tom tried to put his thefts to good use. He bought clothes with which he hoped to impress his classmates. He convinced his parents to let him buy the latest smart phone. Tom also bought things for students he admired. Sometimes they’d accept them. Other times, however, his classmates would just look at him strangely and walk away. Tom was never able to buy the acceptance he craved. Then one Thursday as he was rifling through Mr. Gunst’s desk, the history teacher quietly appeared behind him and asked him what he was doing...

Barbara Brown Taylor’s book Learning to Walk in the Dark is all about embracing the unknown. In it, she tells the story of James Bremner. James grew up in a small Scottish village where there were no wild animals or known criminals. But there were also no streetlights or porchlights. It got really dark. Every night after supper, it was James’ job to take the empty milk bottles down to the bottom of the driveway so that the milkman would get them the next morning. The driveway was about 100 yards long, but from the house it disappeared into complete blackness almost at once. James had to walk out into that darkness. He couldn’t run because he might break the bottles. But as soon as he set the bottles down, he would turn and race back up to safety. The darkness never stopped terrifying him. Every single night it took all the courage he had to do this simple chore. As an adult he said that the bravery that drew out of him stayed with him for the rest of his life. He writes, “Courage, which is no more than the management of fear, must be practiced.”...

On the 24th of October, 2022, a student of Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis, MO opened fire on the upper floors, injuring students and leading others to jump from the higher stories while fleeing for their lives. After a tense standoff with city police, the shooter Orlando Harris was killed. In the wake of the shooting, 15-year-old sophomore Alexzandria Bell died from injuries, and a teacher on the verge of her retirement later died in the hospital. The teacher was Jean Kuczka, and she died because she put herself between the shooter and the other students...

In his book, Searching for Home, Craig Barnes claims that many people today sense the incompleteness of life as it is, but they don’t know where to look for anything better. So they keep trying to fill in the holes in their lives by indulging in food, by increasing their consumer spending, by seeking new experiences, by trying a new drug, by changing careers. But, of course, none of it satisfies for long. At one point Barnes observes that you know people have hit bottom when, instead of longing for a time when suffering will be no more, they plod on in life while never allowing their hopes to rise any higher than the furtive wish, “Maybe tomorrow we will suffer a little less.” That resigned attitude lets suffering have the last word. In despair, our suffering begets only more suffering in the dismal belief that suffering is what we were made for. Paul goes another way, seeing suffering as something that can produce hope. But this hope is not the shrunken hope that says we can do no better than try to suffer a little less. Instead Jesus gives the hope of glory that comes when you realize that by loving the unlovely and by bringing life out of death, Jesus can now give peace even in the midst of suffering.

Although it was an 18-year flashback, the evil Lord Voldemort’s attempt to kill the infant Harry Potter became a climactic moment in the series/films as we learn what it was that prevented Harry from dying that night: it was love. Harry’s mother, Lily, interposed herself between Voldemort and her son and the love in her was so strong as to cause Voldemort’s death curse to rebound and hit him instead (though it killed Lily herself, too). What’s more, this love then attached itself to the only living person left in the room, young Harry himself. And it left a mark on him that could not be erased (Harry’s signature lightning bolt forehead scar was but a token of the far more indelible mark on his soul). Even after Voldemort managed to come back to life, he could not kill Harry but could only destroy the part of his own dark soul that had also attached itself to Harry in that early moment. Voldemort could destroy the piece of himself that lived in Harry but not Harry himself—his mother’s abiding sacrifice and her love shielded him and could not be touched by evil. The hope Paul describes in Romans 5 is like that. It was forged from a sacrifice done for the unsuspected and the undeserving. The love of God that overcame our sin and evil produced a hope that now lives in us and cannot be undone by the evil forces of this world. It is secure. It ensures we will live forever in our Father’s kingdom. It is a living hope. And it cannot die.

I received a call from a precious friend Wednesday of Holy Week. She was in the emergency room where a CT scan revealed that she likely had cancer and that it had metastasized. Her voice broke as she shared this horribly unexpected news. Before the afternoon was done, I made my way to her where she was still trying to digest the news. But you know, she said to me then, “I am not afraid to die.” Oh, she had plenty of worries and concerns to sort out in this life, but ultimately, she spoke of having no fear. Indeed, it wasn’t many days later before she picked up her head and looking around mused not “Why me?” But, rather, “Why not me?” Indeed, she had known heart-rending suffering before. She knew it comes with both peril and gift. And she knew that this was not a kind of punishment deserved, but, rather, part of the walk we are all given to traverse...

All efforts to visualize the Trinity are obviously deficient. The doctrine resists figuration. (How do you convey three distinct divine persons who share one essence?) But that hasn’t stopped artists from trying. Over the centuries, several different types evolved to represent the Three-in-One. The example above, from a late medieval French translation of Augustine’s City of God, shows the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit enthroned in heaven—the Father as an old man holding a globe, at his right hand the Son still bearing the wounds of his passion, and the Holy Spirit hovering between them in the form of a dove. The two male figures share a royal robe and jointly hold open a book, their word of truth...

The Rev. Cleavant Derricks (1909–1977) was a gospel songwriter who pastored and directed the choir of a number of black Baptist churches throughout the South. He was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1984. His song “When God Dips His Pen of Love in My Heart” (sometimes shortened to “When God Dips His Love in My Heart”) was first recorded by the Blackwood Brothers Quartet in 1946. Hank Williams followed that up with his own recording in December 1950—though it wasn’t released until 1985...

Brené Brown, one of my favorite researchers and authors, regularly confronts us with the fact that courage is not the absence of fear or vulnerability, but rather is the ability to persevere in the midst of fear and vulnerability. She has challenged more than 10,000 people in the various presentations she’s given to come up with a single example of courage that did not entail vulnerability… and to date, no one has been able to offer one. Similarly, Admiral James Stockdale, a Medal of Honor winner for valor during the Vietmann War – during which he as tortured more than 20 twenty times while being held prisoner for seven years – once said, “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever that may be.”...

Frozen is another one of the newer Disney films that breaks out of the prince-rescues-princess mold, even poking fun at those tropes. It reminds us that acts of true love take many forms. The truest love in this story is the love between sisters, and especially in Anna’s willingness to put herself in harm’s way, to offer even her own life in order to save her sister. This is after her sister, hurting and angry, rejects years of Anna’s attempts to grow close to her again. It makes me wonder - who do we truly love? Who would we make sacrifices for? Are there some for whom we would even give our own lives if it was necessary? When we think about sacrifice and true love in light of our faith, from our perspective as followers of Jesus, of course our thoughts turn to the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus, when he was arrested, tried, and crucified...

Les Misérables is a redemption story, a work that examines through the lives of its characters themes of redemption and how we do – or don’t – long for redemption and offer redemption to others. The action takes place in France in the early 1800's. The key player is a man named Jean Valjean. As the musical begins, Valjean is being released from prison, where he’s served for 19 long years, serving in hard labor. He served 5 for stealing the loaf of bread, but an additional 14 years were added to his sentence for trying to escape from prison. He gets a ticket of leave, and bears a brand on his chest with his prisoner number 24601, both of which identify him to people as an ex-convict and make it hard for him to start fresh. He can’t find work or a place to live. Finally, a Bishop offers him food and a place to stay, but Valjean steals silver from the Bishop and flees. He’s caught by the police, who are ready to throw him back into prison. But instead, the Bishop comes and vouches for Valjean, saying the silver was a gift, and also giving him a set of silver candlesticks which the Bishop says Valjean forgot. The Bishop says to Valjean: “Remember this, my brother. See in this some higher plan. You must use this precious silver to become an honest man. By the witness of the martyrs, by the Passion and the Blood, God has raised you out of darkness. I have bought your soul for God!”...

When our son, Andy, with Down Syndrome was school age, he preferred the weekends. One school morning, Andy asked his brother, “Brother, what’s today?” Brother said, “Today is Monday.” Andy jumped from the kitchen table, bolted to his bedroom, and slammed the door. Hearing the commotion, I asked Timothy what he said to his brother. Realizing he had said the wrong thing, I went to Andy’s room, opened the door, and observed that he was lying across his bed muttering to himself, “I hate school, I hate Mondays.” I went over to Andy, leaned across the bed and whispered in his ear, “Andy, Friday’s coming!” He immediately changed his demeanor, got up from the bed, finished his breakfast, got ready for school and was on his way. What made the difference for Andy? He had something to look forward to, he had hope that weekends give to most school-aged children, as well as to us “older” children...

Now, we Christians do in fact believe that it’s all going to be all right some day. As the Gospel song puts it, Trials dark on every hand, and we cannot understand all the ways that God could lead us to that blessed promised land; but He guides us with His eye, and we’ll follow till we die, for we’ll understand it better by and by. By and by, when the morning comes, when the saints of God are gathered home, we’ll tell the story how we’ve overcome, for we’ll understand it better by and by.

Early on in Schindler's List, there’s a scene that takes place in a railway station. Oskar Schindler’s standing on the platform, talking to some Nazi military officers, when a train pulls up. It’s a train of cattle cars, but it’s not cattle that are in them. It’s human beings, the refuse of the Third Reich: Jews and Gypsies and gays and the developmentally disabled — all the sorts of people whose lives counted for nothing under that fascist government. It’s a scorching hot day, and the people crammed into those cattle cars have no water. They’re crying out piteously to the people on the platform, reaching their hands through the slats in the cars, saying, “Please, just give us some water!”

The historian Stephen Ambrose has said that, with the exception of General Eisenhower, then-First Sergeant “Bud” Lomell was the single individual most responsible for the success of D-Day. In the early hours of the invasion, his unit of Army Rangers landed at the foot of some sheer cliffs adjacent to Utah Beach, a place known as Pointe du Hoc. They quietly scaled the cliff with ropes, without being noticed by the German defenders — who figured no one could possibly climb those cliffs. Their objective was five large artillery pieces that pretty much controlled Utah Beach. If those cannons were operational a few hours later, when the first wave of invaders was scheduled to hit the beach, the carnage would have been unbelievable. Sergeant Lomell and his men found no cannons where they were supposed to be: only some telephone poles the Germans had set up as decoys, to fool the Allied reconnaissance aircraft into thinking they were gun barrels. Moving inland, they found the real guns hidden in an apple orchard, covered by camouflage netting. About two hundred German soldiers were nearby, receiving orders from their officers. No one was defending the guns. Bud ran up to the artillery emplacement himself and destroyed the gun sights by bashing them with the butt of his rifle. Then, he used thermite grenades to melt the firing mechanism. He performed this sabotage without the Germans noticing. By the time the Allied soldiers hit the beach, the guns of Pointe du Hoc were useless.

Several years ago when I was a pastor in Arkansas, the statewide newspapers covered in great detail the suicide of a prominent Little Rock businessman named Bob. He had a very prestigious job, lots of money, a huge house, a fine family... all the things most people yearn for in life. But Bob wasn't satisfied. Something ate at him and finally drove him to desperate measures for more and more. He turned to stealing, and then, on the verge of getting caught, he committed suicide. The newspapers carried long stories not only about his business misdealings, but also about his difficult family life, especially his relationship with his mother. One issue carried the suicide note he wrote to his mother just before he died. It was filled with bitterness because he had never felt accepted by his mother. It concluded, "Are you happy now?" ...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who lived and died for that man and his cross, was a pacifist who abhorred the thought of getting his hands dirty in the struggle against Nazism, finally brings himself to the conclusion that he can not avoid joining those who sought the life of the leader, the Fuhrer. He writes from the prison cell where it brought him, “In the midst of it all I was met with mercy, not by men, no, but by God himself. And I realized that Jesus Christ also died for him, the enemy – and all at once everything became different. No Christian is harmed by suffering injustice. But perpetuating injustice does harm. Indeed, the evil one wants to accomplish only one thing with you; namely that you also become evil. But were that to happen, he would have won. Therefore, repay no one evil for evil. Dear brothers and sisters, whoever has had the experience of God forgiving him as Jesus forgave them so long ago from his cross – from such a one, all passion for judging and bearing grudges disappears; he wants only one thing more; to serve, to help, to forgive, without measure, without condition, without end.”

The mid-twentieth century theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, is often credited1 with having written what has become one of the world’s most famous prayers. The first part of the prayer is the part that is familiar as the “Serenity Prayer” to 12 step folks, indeed, to people the world over: God grant us the grace to accept with serenity the things which cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. Whether Niebuhr originated that little prayer or not, it is less well-known that Niebuhr finished the prayer with the following, seldom-quoted lines: Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as the pathway to peace; taking, as [Jesus] did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will. That I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever in the next...

I remember the first time that I saw G.F. Watts' painting entitled HOPE. The image of the woman sitting upon a globe, blindfolded, with an instrument in her arms that appeared to have lost all of its strings but one. The painting may have been known within art circles; but for many people, including myself, we were introduced to this late 19th-century image in 2008 when then Senator Barack Obama explained the title of his second book, Audacity of Hope.

("A young lady one day was speeding through a small Georgia town. She was traveling 70 mph in a 55 mph speed zone. The police pulled her over and wrote her a ticket that would cost her $100. She didn't have the money to pay it and ended up having to go to court over the ticket. In the courtroom, the judge said, 'You were found guilty of going 70 miles an hour in a 55-mile speed zone. You have to pay $100'...")

("Ads are everywhere. Inescapable. Unexpected. Sometimes annoying. But there's a message in all of this for us. Our assignment, each and every day in an all-surrounding way, is to be an ad for God...")

Fred Craddock tells about a boyhood experience. His family had lost their farm and moved into town. Craddock is a rather shy person, and he says the isolation of the farm is the reason why that is true. “Socially inadequate” is the way he puts it. When school started he put on his “new” clothes that had been given him by means of a couple of charities in town and he made his way to class. The teacher said, “Let’s get acquainted and start our school year by everybody telling what you did on vacation.” A bad start. There was a girl who had spent a week in Florida, another who had gone to Niagara Falls. To Craddock, these places were pictures in books, and they had actually gone there. Another student and his family had visited Washington, D. C. and seen the historical monuments and all that. Little Freddy was sitting in the back of the room growing more nervous by the moment as eventually, he knew, it would be his turn to tell what he had done on vacation. What was he going to say? He had been on the farm all summer. He had never gone anywhere. Graciously, they ran out of time, but Fred knew it would be his turn the next day. Later, at home, his father could tell he was worried. “What’s the matter, son?” “It didn’t go well in school today.” “Why not?” “The teacher wants us to tell what we did on vacation. All I did was dig potatoes and pick and shell purple-hull peas and things like that. I don’t have anything to tell.” “Sounds to me like your teacher is asking you for a lie, so go ahead and give her one.” “But you and Mama have told us we’re not supposed to lie.” “That’s true, but you’re also supposed to obey your teacher.” “What am I going to say?” “Well, just pick out the good parts of several of the other stories and put it all together. You’ll be all right.”...

("All Saints Day 1950, was properly joyful in Korea. U.S. Army Chaplain Father Emil Kapaun celebrated four field Masses that day for the soldiers in the Third Battalion of the Eighth Calvary Regiment. Camped almost on the Chinese border, the men believed the war all but won. All Souls is a somber day, and, that year in Korea, it turned cataclysmic as twenty thousand Chinese soldiers entered the war, quickly overwhelming the three thousand Americans posted in the north..." A MUST READ!!)

When Roman citizens were accused of a crime they would be given a hearing. When the accused person was found innocent, the judge would say that they were "justified." This was an announcement that the falsely accused should once again have the trust of and good relationship with the rest of the community.

Two weeks ago, Tatyana Sapunova was driving with her mother near Moscow when she saw a sign planted by the side of the road. “Death To [Jews],” it said. She stopped and attempted to tear it down. That’s when the explosive device rigged to the sign exploded. The blast tore through her face, hands and legs. She is reported to have lost sight in one eye. Sapunova, for the record, is not Jewish. In fact, she was baptized a Christian. I have no way of knowing if she still follows that faith or, indeed, any faith. I do know this: What she did speaks directly to what faith is supposed to be about — and too seldom is. These days, religion is a story of scandal or of somebody jockeying for political advantage. A story of warfare over land or the rationalization of suicide bombings. For some reason, it’s seldom a story like this, seldom a story of someone motivated to stand with the outcasts like Christ among the lepers — a person compelled to do the right thing because it is the right thing...

Rob Bell‘s latest book, titled What We Talk About When We Talk About God, provides another example of the drastically changing worldview, outlining in a very readable and engaging fashion how science has changed our view of the universe. And he then asks questions that might lead us into fresh ways of understanding God that might resonate better with those newer understandings of science. And among the questions he raises is the one we’ve raised today about Barbara Garcia’s answered prayer. Bell writes, I remember years ago hearing someone tell a dramatic story about something incredible that had happened in his life, and the way he summarized what had happened was “. . . and then God showed up!” It was moving to hear how thrilled he was, but I had one of those “Wait — what?” moments soon afterward. If God showed up, then prior to that, was God somewhere else?

Today Brennan Manning is a very popular author. He has written over a dozen books-Abba Child, The Ragamuffin Gospel, and The Signature of Jesus, to name a few. He has a very powerful ministry of "helping people to enter the existential experience of being loved in their brokenness." But there was once a day when he himself was in great need of being loved. He grew up in Brooklyn, NY. He attended college for two years before enlisting in the Marines and serving in Korea. After active duty, he enrolled in college but only studied journalism for one semester. His soul was restless. He knew that their had to be something more to life than what he was experiencing. He enrolled in a Catholic seminary but left after seven days, "because of the dreaded "rising at 5 a.m., chanting psalms in Latin with pantywaist 18-year-old postulants," being ordered to eat beets ("which I hated"), and "stumbling up steps in an ankle-length robe unaware that I had to lift the hem."...

In the Premium edition of This Is True by Randy Cassingham, he reports on a story in the Chicago Tribune. One evening, after allegedly drinking 10 beers, Steven Glenn, 38, of Plainfield, Ill., thought it would be a good idea to light a 10-inch commercial fireworks shell he had. In his house. He set it up and lit it. In his living room. Plainfield Fire Chief John Eichelberger said, "The whole house is pretty much, from the concussion of the explosion and the fire and the smoke, totaled." Glenn was treated and released; his girlfriend Shauna Adams, 33, was hospitalized in fair condition. The house was a rental. It's strange but some people just can't seem to get it right, can they?...

("On the night of Oct. 19, 1984, Erik Vogel was uneasy about flying. It was snowing; his plane's de-icer and autopilot weren't working; and his co-pilot had been bumped to fit one more passenger on his 10-seater. But the young pilot was behind schedule and he felt like his job was on the line, so he took off, as he did most days, shuttling between the remote communities that dot the Canadian wilderness...")

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The story is often told of the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill giving a commencement speech in which he took the podium, stood in silence for a moment, and said, “Never ever, ever give up,” and then sat down. But according to the research of Valerie Strauss, what Churchill actually said on October 29, 1941 in a speech at the Harrow School was, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” He went on to discuss the state of Britain, saying, “We now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.” This is akin to what Paul is saying spiritually: never give in, never give in, never, never, never give in, for we have only to persevere to conquer...