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In the small village of Ockley, nestled in the lush English countryside, there lived an elderly woman named Edith. Known for her unshakable faith, she had seen her fair share of trials. Widowhood came early, followed by the loss of...
When Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he used a technique called *buon fresco* — applying pigment directly onto freshly spread wet plaster....
In 2019, a three-year-old boy named Christopher Ramirez wandered away from his family's home in Grimes County, Texas, following a neighbor's dog into dense woods....
In 1899, German archaeologist Robert Koldewey began excavating the ruins of ancient Babylon in modern-day Iraq. After eighteen years of painstaking work, he uncovered the...
Charles Spurgeon, one of history's greatest preachers, battled severe depression his entire ministry. He sometimes couldn't preach for weeks. Yet he returned—again and again. "I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages," he wrote.
In 2017, crews from two countries began building the Pelješac Bridge in Croatia, a stunning cable-stayed span connecting the mainland to the Pelješac peninsula across...
Karl Barth, arguably the 20th century's greatest theologian, was once asked to summarize his massive Church Dogmatics—thousands of pages of dense theology. He paused, then replied: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." The scholars laughed; Barth was serious.
In 1989, Bryan Stevenson drove his beat-up Honda Civic from Harvard Law School to rural Alabama, where Walter McMillian sat on death row for a...
In 2018, a small Baptist church in rural Alabama had the same Wednesday night potluck they'd hosted for forty years — casseroles on folding tables,...
In just 10 years, Francis Xavier baptized an estimated 30,000 people across India, Southeast Asia, and Japan—often preaching through translators in languages he barely knew. He wore out his body, sleeping little, eating less, constantly moving.
On the morning of November 15, 1940, the people of Coventry, England woke to find their beloved cathedral reduced to a smoldering shell. German bombers...
In January 2024, a search-and-rescue crew in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado set out to recover the body of 34-year-old hiker Daniel Ostrander. He...
Dr. Amara Osei still had confetti in her hair from the Emory University School of Medicine graduation ceremony when her phone buzzed at 4:47 a.m....
In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, Jean Valjean — a hardened ex-convict — is taken in for the night by the Bishop of Digne, a man...
On July 3, 2012, Tomas Lopez was working as a lifeguard at Hallandale Beach, Florida, when someone pointed to a swimmer struggling beyond the roped...
In 1988, a commercial diver named David Wardell was working sixty feet beneath the surface of the North Sea when his air hose snagged on...
In 2018, Dr. Sarah Shin left her tenured position at Georgetown University to move into a refugee apartment complex in Clarkston, Georgia — a town...
On November 22, 1873, a ship called the Ville du Havre collided with an iron sailing vessel in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and...
For twenty-two winters, Ruth Abernathy left a kerosene lamp burning in the front window of her farmhouse outside Galena, Kansas. Not because she expected anyone....
In 1997, married hikers Doug and Sheryl Garfield attempted a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail starting from Mount Katahdin in Maine. They had trained separately...
During Latin American dictatorships, base ecclesial communities met secretly—reading Scripture, supporting each other, quietly resisting. Many members were killed; the communities were targeted. Yet they survived, and the theology born in those circles now influences the global church. The oppressors are gone; the communities remain.
In November 1873, Horatio Spafford stood at the railing of a ship crossing the North Atlantic, staring into the cold dark water below. Weeks earlier,...
In 1989, surgeons at the University of Chicago attempted something that had never been done before. Dr. Christoph Broelsch removed a portion of a mother's...
Someone once observed: "The problem with a living sacrifice is it keeps crawling off the altar." Dead sacrifices stay put; living ones squirm. Paul's image is provocative—offer your BODY as a LIVING sacrifice. Not just intentions or feelings but actual flesh-and-blood living.