Every Sunday we feature a brief “sermon” from an unlikely source. This week we feature Francis Collins, the geneticist who led the Human Genome Project. Collins came to faith later in life and in this interview with CNN, talks about why. I’ll chime in after the video.
Thanks again for all of the votes last week. Dove won by a considerable margin.
Who will win this week?
I was riding on a crowded train during rush hour in 2010 when a little Somali girl, who couldn’t find a seat on the train, climbed into my lap and fell asleep.
While I was holding her, I started talking to her mom, who told me in broken English that they were refugees from Somalia. Her husband had left the family shortly after they arrived in the U.S., and now she was stranded here, raising five children by herself, without any income or language skills or job training.
Then the woman leaned her head against the window as [...]
Who does God say we are?
That question came up last weekend when I was hanging out with a few really good buddies who are students at Western Washington University. We were wrestling with how our identities on this earth are at the root of so many of our problems and decided to go to the Bible to help us figure it out.
Who does God say we are?
That question came up again as I listened to [...]
Have you ever had a conversation with another Christian and felt the two of you had a completely different view of God? And have you ever wondered why? You’re reading the same Bible, after all, and supposedly interacting with the same God. How can one person have a rigid, black and white view of God while another sees more mystery and ambiguity? How can two intellectual powerhouses like Brian McLaren and John Piper have such different views of the same Biblical text?
Lately, I’ve come to believe it’s because, while they’re both looking at the same Scriptures, they actually see something different. And it’s only partly because of how they’re interpreting it.
I believe the reason they read the Scriptures differently is [...]
To celebrate my son Brent’s 16th birthday, my two boys and I signed up for the Tennessee Motorcycle Safety Course. It’s a two-day program designed for folks who’ve never ridden a cycle before. At the end of the second day, the prize is a motorcycle license.
Though we don’t have motorcycles, we dreamed of riding together on the Natchez Trace, a beautiful stretch of highway that runs from Nashville to Mississippi. No stop signs or traffic lights. Only beautiful scenery and gently winding roads.
Starting our day at the training facility with six other men, we began with [...]
I am pro-life. I believe abortion is a painful and dark reality in the world.
But I’m often reluctant to associate with the pro-life movement. And I don’t think I’m alone.
I remember, years ago, when I was in high school, sitting at a picnic table at a park near my home reading Martin Luther King’s Letters From a Birmingham Jail and being moved by the love Dr. King had for his oppressors. He was willing to cause tension, for sure, but he was also willing to die as a martyr. He was willing to die for those who he saw as lost in darkness.
The ability to love our enemies, and I mean deeply love our enemies, is of the most [...]
Storyline readers are incredibly diverse. A number of our readers do not attend a church with regularity. And yet we are a people who want to follow the real Christ, and contribute to His real community. As such, we offer our Sunday Morning Sermons. We’ve found brief interactions with a wide range of personalities and intend to feature one every Sunday. This is the Sunday morning sermon done, well, differently. After each feature, Don will chime in to share his opinions on the “sermon.” [...]
Last week, the story of Jack and the Nebraska football team won your vote. I have a feeling I know which will win this week as well. Which of these is your favorite? [...]
There was a lot of press after the suicide of Rick Warren’s son – some supportive, some reprehensibly critical, some just web filler. I’ve been hesitant to add more noise, except that I’ve had a history with depression. Perhaps my story will encourage you that you are not alone.
I cannot pretend to know the depth of pain that Matthew Warren endured. But I have a bit of an idea. When I was 27 years old, I felt like Elijah in 1 Kings 19, despairing under that broom tree. “Enough of this, God! Take my life.” I’d spent seven years trying to overcome my own personal stew of family dysfunction, addictive behavior and the thousand natural shocks that the artistic temperament is heir to. During that time I worked on healing my eating disorder, I saw a therapist, prayed a lot, memorized Bible verses, and attended every Christian healing seminar that came along. Whenever they had a prayer team after church, I went up, cried, fell over, and got back up. It was the nineties: the golden age of self-help.
But the summer of my 28th year I could not get back up [...]
