Feature

After I preach, I want to relive the moment over and over, soaring away on an ego-driven high. Beforehand, I hide in the bathroom.

This spring, I didn't find any morels in the woods around my house. But I did find a lot of other things.

We seem to always want something—anything—to happen. This has implications for the life of prayer.

My brother is nine and I am ten. Wood already obeys his hands when he asks it gently to work with him.

"Everybody thinks the church stopped supporting science with Galileo. That's a myth tied up in the politics of the 19th century."

Modern cosmology indicates that the universe cannot have been created without any constraints. So where do we find the elusive nihilo?

My radiation treatment meant I'd lose my voice for six weeks, and our church couldn't afford pulpit supply. So the people decided to be my voice.

Modern medicine makes it difficult to die. Often, treatment seems to prolong not living so much as dying. With no earthly hope, Regan was spared all this.

"Bonhoeffer came to embody some of the contradictions modernity imposed on the faith. I could happily spend the rest of my life sorting through this."

Decades ago, when a need arose at a church in rural Kansas, the finance chair would ask, "Who'll give 25 dollars?" Today, we have Kickstarter.

Our call is a close call, one that draws us close to the sharp edges of life. "While we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake."

People appeal to Bonhoeffer to justify a range of moral choices. They tend to ignore his emphasis on context and the need for constant discernment.

In Oslo, the freeze-thaw cycle of a warm winter made my bike commute unpleasant. Elsewhere, it's a matter of survival.

"One of the powers of debt is to isolate us. We have to overcome that isolation, and it's tricky."

I would sit between them, and every hour or so one would murmur a response to some moppet's question, and the other would smile at his garrulity.

In 1998, I drove my parents from Wisconsin to Georgia to visit the new National POW Museum. My siblings couldn't believe I'd agreed to this.

I want the kingdom of God to be civilized. If possible I'd like to be able to keep sleeping in my own bed.

The Bible's images for God must be taken in an analogical sense. Yet the Bible exhibits no anxiety about using them.

My Asperger's and my ministry

A pet peeve of mine is the pigeonholing of authors—especially the label "nature writers" inflicted on certain writers of immense spiritual power.