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Finding Significance After experiencing a crushing political defeat and breaking off an engagement to be married in 1841, Abraham Lincoln was in a dark place. He later talked about how he had contemplated suicide, but refrained because he “had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived.” His desire to do something of...

Life Is Short Would it be better to win a silver medal or a bronze? In 1995, psychologists from Cornell University studied the reaction of Olympic silver and bronze medalists. They found that bronze medalists were significantly happier with their achievement than silver medalists. The reason is that silver medalists compared themselves with...

The Temple of Praise At the entrance to Solomon’s Temple stood two 28-and-a-half-foot tall bronze pillars. These pillars were elaborately decorated with capitals in the shape of lilies (1 Kings 7:15–22). Each pillar was given a name: Jachin and Boaz. They served as a grand gateway into the temple where the presence of the Lord dwelt. In a...

A Stressful Situation The book of Exodus is one of the most important historical narratives in Scripture. It includes adventure, rescue, supernatural confrontations between good and evil, and the mass liberation of a people from slavery. In these pages, you’ll meet a hero (Moses) and a villain (Pharaoh). You’ll see God work miracles and wonders...

Learning from Failure According to The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking by Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird, failure is a key to effectiveness. The authors explain that we learn from our missteps. “Failure is a critical element of effective learning, teaching, and creative problem solving. Mistakes teach us to focus on the specific task...

Blood, Frogs, Gnats, and Flies One of the most popular attractions at the Bronx Zoo is its one-of-a-kind Bug Carousel. Instead of mounting horses or other animals, children climb aboard 64 different types of insects, such as fireflies, grasshoppers, and ladybugs. They can even ride a monarch butterfly and a dung beetle! Each insect has been...

Dead Livestock, Boils, and Hail In 2003, the Xinjiang region in northwestern China experienced a devastating plague of gerbils. The “great gerbil” of Central Asia can grow up to 16 inches long and is basically a large rat. Hordes of them devoured eleven million acres of grassland, an area about the size of Switzerland. Plagues can do a huge...

Crossing the Red Sea In art, literature, and music, African Americans have often made reference to the Exodus narrative, comparing it to their own pursuit of freedom. In the folktale, “The People Could Fly,” for example, the story is told that Africans used to be able to fly but during slavery had forgotten how. An old man appears in a field...

The Celebration Song The New England Primer was one of the most popular books in 17th- and 18th-century America. It sold more than three million copies and taught generations of children how to read and spell. The letters of the alphabet were linked to Bible stories, for example, “A: In Adam’s Fall, we sinned all.” M stood for Moses: “Moses...

Worship Through Giving When King Joash, guided by the high priest Jehoiada, was restoring Solomon’s temple, he ordered a chest to be placed outside it and issued a proclamation asking people to bring gifts (2 Chron. 24:1–16). Everyone “brought their contributions gladly, dropping them into the chest until it was full” (v. 10). The money collected...