A fast-food loving black bear stole a $45 Taco Bell order from the front porch of a home in the Orlando suburb of Longwood moments after the Uber Eats driver delivered it, an Orlando television station reported. This is no Florida man story, as there’s no evidence a Floridian dressed in a bear costume stole the food. Rather, the […]
Read More Beary HungryA 1941 artwork by Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian has been found to have been hanging upside down in various museums for 75 years. An honest mistake since the piece features interlaced red, yellow, black and blue adhesive tape strips that subtly thicken at the bottom. But a photograph of Mondrian’s studio shows the same […]
Read More UPSIDE DOWNIn 1738, the literary giant Samuel Johnson wrote in his diary: “Oh Lord, enable me to redeem the time which I have spent in sloth.” Nineteen years later, he wrote, “Oh mighty God, enable me to shake off sloth and redeem the time misspent in idleness and sin by diligent application of the days yet […]
Read More ResolutionsThe Italians have a legend about a woman named Befana who lived along the dusty road that led to Bethlehem. She was her village’s best housekeeper. Meticulous. Which was no small task with all that dust. Late one night there was a knock at the door and she opened it to find three kings in search of […]
Read More too busy for christmasSu Zhu Yuan thought Americans celebrated Christmas as part of their patriotic duty. Relatives gave gifts. Neighbors prepared feasts. Storefronts in Chinatown advertised sales. But during her eight years in the United States, no one told her the biblical story behind Christmas–until this year. On Sunday, Yuan celebrated the birth of Jesus for the first […]
Read More Christmas rebirthChristmas is the season of choice. If you want to buy a food processor, Amazon offers you 2,000 types. Or how about a drill—there are more than 40,000 options. No, I’m not making those numbers up. Choices can be glorious, and confusing, and empowering, and overwhelming, all at the same time. And in the West […]
Read More FINDING CHRISTMASThe rock star, Sting, in his autobiography Broken Music, tells how he bought his first bass guitar. In a local music shop, in the middle of all the shiny new guitars, he saw an old Fender bass. is a careworn relic of the sixties, the paintwork ruined and the varnish flaked. Among all the shiny others on the […]
Read More Made newOne hot afternoon, a certain woman walked to her neighbor’s produce stand to buy grapes. The line was long. And each person seemed to get special attention. But she waited patiently. When she finally made it to the front of the line, the owner asked for her order. She asked for grapes. “Please excuse me […]
Read More Waiting . . .Deep in the Congo, at a Christian mission, a young woman died in childbirth as she gave birth to a premature baby. The missionaries tried to improvise an incubator, but the only hot water bottle they had was beyond repair. So, they prayed for the baby and for her little sister who was now an […]
Read More The Little thingsOne of my favorite studies about gratitude is the “Count Your Blessings” study conducted by the psychologist Bob Emmons. In his study Emmons had participants do the simplest thing: At the end of each day take a moment to count your blessings by writing them down in a journal. And you know what happened? At […]
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Pursuing God 