I was two years old when E.T. the Extraterrestrial was released in theaters. This sweet (if also sad and scary) story about a wayward alien and his friendship with a boy named Elliot was my first movie. As my Mom tells it, I reacted very little during the film. Because I was so little, she…
Have you ever felt like an outcast? Of course you have. We have all felt outsider-like twinges from time to time. I know I have! No one is exempt from these humbling and bewildering emotions. People have the power to draw a social circle—invisible, yet real—and simply not allow us inside that space. These brush-offs…
John 13:34-35 says, “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (CSB). These words have inspired millions of people over the centuries. But as a child,…
Have you ever disciplined a child only to hear him or her say, “That didn’t hurt!”? Perhaps you remember when you were that child. Did you ever see the look on a child’s face when you said, “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you”? That child was unpersuaded. The writer of…
The world will tell you that you aren’t good enough. You need to do this, buy that, and act like <insert the latest popular public figure here> to be loved and accepted. You need to have it all, be it all, and do it all. This is what is seen in our culture as “making…
The world is having an identity crisis. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote: All society How’er unequal, monstrous, crazed and cursed, Is but the expression of men’s single lives,— The loud sum of the Silent Units. When we look around, it seems the unequal, monstrous, crazed, and cursed are over populous these days. Often, we’re part of…