You gave me room when I was in distress...You have put gladness in my heart...I will lie down and sleep in peace. (Psalm 4) Can you tell me a time when someone has "invaded" your space (physically or emotionally)? How did you respond? As teenagers we celebrated those rituals of passage as a time of growth — braces removed, going into high school, getting our driver's license, getting a part time job to provide our gas money, going to the prom, planning for what was after high school. However, through all of those movements of change it was probably not uncommon for you and I to take offense when our parents tried to "get in our space" and tell us what we should and should not do. How many of

When I was a youth, I remember going to my grandparents on Saturday evenings and watching "Hee Haw." Yes, I am that old, and if you have watched the show or heard of it, then so are you! If you have not, well, you missed quite an experience. You had comedy sketches where people popped up in a corn field to throw out one-liners, bluegrass and country music, and my favorite — the guys who sang a particular song every week — Gloom, despair, and agony on me; deep dark depression, excessive misery. If it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all. Gloom, despair, and agony on me. And then group would start crying hysterically. After all these years, I still remember their lament word for word.

Once, at a national meeting of college student-services professionals, a distinguished dean of students was leading a workshop, talking of things he'd learned on the job. He was remarking on the fact that, wherever you go in American higher education, there's one gripe you're certain to hear from the student body. It's about the food in the dining hall. As a man whose job it was to make the life of students more comfortable, the dean shared how, over the years, he had convened many university committees to improve the quality of dining-hall food. Those committees polled the student body to find out what they wanted, then made improvements. The food just got better and better. Yet, over all t

These words from Mark Batterson are quite apropos as we begin a new year. Batterson was referring to a trip he took to the Galapagos islands in which he read the above words on a Sprite can! As he stated, "The trip was one adventure after another...I think those words resonate with one of our deepest longings in the human heart — the longing for adventure." Now you may be saying, "One adventure after another is just not good for me right now." However, hear me out. What would it mean to each of us as people of faith to live our lives as a journey of faith...an adventure of faith? What if we let go of our preconceived notions about our "church life" that says why take a chance and do away wit