We do not often hear people talk about character. We might refer to someone as being “a character” but not as being a person of character. What is character and how can we identify it? I recently rediscovered a book in my bookcase entitled, Character Matters! Raising Kids with Values That Last by John and Susan Yates. It is well worth reading. It describes character qualities that are important for our children to learn but also important for all adults to know, practice, and teach by example. We cannot instruct our children in the way they should go without leading the way. Whatever we do not teach our children, they will learn somewhere else. We cannot assume they will automatically absorb desirable values without our daily ...

There is a worse pandemic than COVID-19. It is a pandemic that annually kills more people through suicide than COVID. That pandemic is depression. This is the first in a two-part article on depression in America. Depression is the prevailing mental illness of this generation. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated 21.0 million adults in the United States had at least one major depressive episode in 2021. This number represented 8.4% of all U.S. adults. Why? Why are so many Americans depressed? Causes of depression are hard to determine but here are eight suggested reasons:

1. Exhaustion, burnout, fatigue. Many Americans are exhausted and have nothing left in the tank to withstand the pressures of ...
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Lately I have been challenged by two passages in the Bible. The first passage is Matthew 28:19, 20 which commands Christians to “make disciples.” In fact, making disciples is the only imperative in that passage, called the Great Commission. All the other action words are participles. So, we are commanded by Jesus to make disciples of all the nations. What does that mean? It means to go into all the world and make imitators of Jesus Christ. The Greek word for disciple is mathetes and means “to be a pupil, a student.” In the context of Jesus’ commission, it means to reproduce His life in others.

The second passage that challenges me is 2 Timothy 2:2 in which the Apostle Paul exhorts his disciple, Timothy, saying...

Marriage, as an institution, is under attack today. Consider this quote from the Pew Research Center:

The share of U.S. adults who are currently married has declined modestly in recent decades, from 58% in 1995 to 53% today. Over the same period, the share of adults who are living with an unmarried partner has risen from 3% to 7%. While the share who are currently cohabiting remains far smaller than the share who are married, the share of adults ages 18 to 44 who have ever lived with an unmarried partner (59%) has surpassed the share who has ever been married (50%), according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG).

As a Christian, you might wonder, “What does God have to say about couples ...