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Barry Lorch in his San Diego Union column recently told of a debate on the floor of the United States Senate about 130 years ago. The issue was whether alcohol should be sold in the territories seeking statehood. One notoriously anti-alcohol senator, who, according to one description, was so dry he was…

Ever heard of “SDL”. No! I’m not talking about a daytime version of Saturday night live, I’m talking about a style of teaching. It’s called Self-directed learning. It came on the scene when Maurice Gibbons published a book titled, “Walk-about: Searching for the Right Passage from Childhood to School.”…

Someone wrote: On a beautiful fall day, four of my granddaughter's friends decided to go for a drive instead of showing up to class on time. When they did arrive, the girls explained to the teacher they had had a flat tire. The teacher accepted the excuse, much to the girls' relief. "Since you missed…

Joseph Ellis became a best selling author, but even before his writing, he was famous for his vivid lectures. His classes at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts were popular because he would often puncuate his lectures with memories of his own combat experience in Vietnam. As Ellis's reputation grew—his…

British shock-radio host Tim Shaw may have finally learned a valuable lesson about the consequences of our words. While working his usual 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift, Shaw told the pin-up girl he was interviewing?on air?that he was willing to leave his wife and two kids for her. Minutes later, his wife,…

In 1993, Lt. Col. Gary Morsch joined the Army Reserves as a doctor to care not only for U.S. soldiers, but also for wounded civilians and prisoners of war. In 2005, as a part of the war in Iraq, he was called up to serve as the field doctor for a battalion near the Iranian border. He would take care…

There is a verse in the NT about the disciples that says, “They saw Jesus . . . walking on the water; and they were terrified.” Max Lucado says of this verse: Faith is often the child of fear. Fear propelled Peter out of the boat. He’d ridden these waves before. He knew what these storms could do. He’d…

That’s what Mary Poplin did: She was professor of Education and Dean of the School of Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University. She attended a Methodist church as a child, but began searching other spiritual traditions, including Buddhism, Transcendental Meditation, even telepathic attempts…

What does manipulation look like? Well The movie Waking Ned Divine begins in the cozy living room of an elderly Irish couple. In the background we hear a television announcer informing the audience that the big jackpot lottery numbers are about to be announced. The husband, Jackie, settles into a comfortable…

It’s kind of like chocolate covered peanuts. Yeah, that’s right chocolate covered peanuts. That’s probably what you call them. I call them “brown cocaine.” They are addictive! Every once in a while, especially around Christmas, we get some of those. Someone may give them as a Christmas gift or something.…

What would it be like to be 8 years old, thousands of miles from home, in an orphanage in a foreign country, and have no idea where your mom was? Can you imagine the lonliness? Can you imagine being in that place where you received hardly anything to eat and where you were deathly sick from malaria,…

Tony Campolo – a great preacher in the northeast - tells about something that happened to him when he was fourteen. His family was very poor, and his Dad couldn’t work because he had Hodgkin's disease. The insurance was running out, and the family didn’t know how they were going to eat. Tony figured…

One new believer discovered this. He says that right after he and his wife became believers, the IRS the IRS asked him to defend a tax return from years earlier. Unfortunately, he couldn't defend it. He had been dishonest, and so he began months of painful meetings with the IRS. Finally, the day came…

SeMildred Fister's beauty parlor in Jefferson, Iowa, has an unusual rule. Mildred refuses to allow gossip. A columnist for the Des Moines Register reacted this way: This is a beauty parlor, for goodness' sake, one of those places women come to say things—loving, kind, unkind, and, sure, maybe downright…

One person wrote of experiencing this kind of worship in a very likely place. He says: Locked behind the razor-wire fences of a Florida prison is no place to spend a holiday. I'd spent 15 Christmases under these less-than-festive conditions, but this year my situation looked even bleaker. I was stuck…

The first time the town of Tubingen, Germany, expelled all of its Jewish residents was in 1477. It wasn’t the last. It became a place where anti-Jewish doctrines thrived, especially during World War II. Today, however, the Jerusalem Post reports that not only has a tiny Jewish community returned to the…