Aug-featured-devotionals-05

Broken For Me?

While away from home on a lengthy work assignment, I attended a church quite different from my one back home. For instance, my adopted church observed communion (the Lord’s Supper) every time they met.

ODB: Just Ask!

The gleeful shouts arising from our basement came from my wife, Shirley. For hours she’d wrestled with a newsletter project, and she was ready to be done with it. In her anxiety and uncertainty about how to move forward, she prayed for God’s help.
Aug-featured-devotionals-04

The Unhappy Sin

Essayist Joseph Epstein writes, “Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.” He goes on to say that envy makes us look “ungenerous, mean, and small-hearted.” There’s plenty of research to back up Epstein’s statement.

ODB: When You Need Help

It was a Monday morning, but my friend Chia-ming wasn’t in the office. He was at home, cleaning the bathroom. A month unemployed, he thought, and no job leads. His firm had shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic and worries about the future filled Chia-ming with fear.
Aug-featured-devotionals-03

Jilted Lovers

"Actually, I’m divorced.” My friend’s eyes fell as he spoke. This was not something he enjoyed telling others. “I’m not sure what happened. We were both wrong. It all just fell apart.”

ODB: Landing Spot

The impala, a member of the antelope family, is able to jump up to ten feet high and thirty feet in length. It’s an incredible feat, and no doubt essential to its survival in the African wild. Yet, at many impala enclosures found in zoos, you’ll find that the animals are kept in place by a wall that’s merely three feet tall.
Aug-featured-devotionals-02

The Risk Of Love

The Grant Study has followed the lives of more than 250 Harvard graduates for 70 years to learn what makes people happy. It revealed that positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones—in part because they expose us to rejection and heartbreak.

ODB: The Course of a Lifetime

“There are different questions a young artist can ask,” says singer-songwriter Linford Detweiler of eclectic folk duo Over the Rhine. “One is, ‘What must I do to be famous?’ ” Detweiler warns that such a goal “swings the door open to all manner of destructive forces from both within and without.”
Aug-featured-devotionals-01

Loving The Lonely

Finishing up a long day’s work, I pressed the touch screen on my computer one last time and saw a date that was very familiar. After a moment, I realized: Today is my dad’s birthday. Quickly my thoughts went to my mom.