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Press On and Press In In the documentary series Dispatches from the Front, director Tim Keesee tells the story of David, a gospel worker in the Southeastern European nation of Albania. Though the challenges for missions in Albania are immense, David persists with a simple approach: “Pray. Meet people. Tell them about Jesus.” And, little by...

The End of Evangelism At the end of John Bunyan’s classic book, Pilgrim’s Progress, the characters Christian and Hopeful meet two angels as they reach the Celestial City, or heaven. The angels tell them what to expect: “You must there receive the comfort of all your toil, and have joy for all your sorrow; you must reap what you have sown,...

Israel: The Working Prostitute The film Pretty Woman grossed $463 million and made a star of Julia Roberts. Roberts plays the role of Vivian, a prostitute hired by a man named Edward, and unexpectedly their assignation leads them to fall in love. But the popular romantic comedy glosses over the gritty and tragic realities of women engaged...

Yahweh: The Compassionate Father In her masterful book The Guns of August, historian Barbara Tuchman examines the weeks before World War I commenced. She describes the public statements, private messages, bluster, and threats among the leaders of Russia, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom that hurtled Europe toward a war that resulted...

A Gospel Hope For over two years from 2008 to 2010, the University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball team never lost a game. Their winning streak included two national titles and 90 consecutive victories, which passed the previous NCAA Division I basketball record of 88 victories, held by John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins in the 1970s. Fans expect...

Remember My Enemies In February 2017, two casually dressed women approached Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korean despot Kim Jung-un, in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. One woman sprayed him with a lethal nerve gas while the other held a handkerchief to his face; he was pronounced dead on arrival to the local hospital. Although...

A Prophet’s Call—and the Initiative of God The world was horrified in 2014 when the radical Islamic group ISIS (or ISIL) began releasing videos documenting the beheading of their captives. As ISIS gained control over territory in Syria and Iraq, the stories of their cruelty and torture grew even more horrific. Yazidi women were traded as...

Beyond Complaint: When Lament Leads to Praise Before experiencing a personal tragedy, Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff had abstract answers to one of the hardest questions of faith: why do God’s people suffer? But the abstract answers he worked out in philosophical proofs were of little use to him when his own adult son, Eric,...

A Flourishing City James Fallows, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, and his wife, Deb, traveled 54,000 miles across America in a single-engine plane. Fallows wrote about the commonalities he noticed in healthy American cities. For one, there were local heroes in these cities, big and small. They also had downtowns, community colleges,...

God: Judge, Refiner, Remember-er One prolific writer has said that books are built on good beginnings and endings. The collection of books that comprise the Minor Prophets more than exceed this criteria for good endings! The twelve prophets—some of priestly or royal lineage, some of common vocation, some with little biographical information...