We moved from downtown Chicago to Colorado in 1992, and that next summer a friend from church talked us into doing something that seemed daunting to us city slickers: he led us up one of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks (4593 meters).  That mountain, Sunshine Peak, is actually the smallest of the 14ers, barely making the cut at 14,001 feet. Despite our aching legs, we felt a huge sense of accomplishment, exactly the kind of feeling you expect after climbing a mountain. We did ...

I’ve just returned from a conference in Toronto which gathered 900 representatives from 130 countries. They are among the most compassionate and dedicated people I have met, yet few people know about them because they operate out of the limelight, behind bars. They work or volunteer for Prison Fellowship International, an organization headed by an unassuming Canadian named Ron Nikkel. My friendship with Ron goes back more than thirty years, when he headed an organization called Youth Guidance that worked with juvenile delinquents (euphemistically called “non-school-oriented youth,” as if there exists ...

When we moved from downtown Chicago to the foothills of the Colorado Rockies in 1992, we left behind many things: superb restaurants, Starbucks every few blocks, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, jogging along Lake Michigan, the electric buzz of living in a great city.  One definite improvement, though, was wildlife.  If you discount the times I jogged through the Lincoln Park Zoo, most days I saw only pigeons and ugly city squirrels (rats with tails, as a friend calls them).  Yes, ...

As I write, we’re returning at last from a two-week tour of England and Scotland. Just getting home has been an ordeal! Somehow United Airlines bumped us from our original return flight from Edinburgh on May 23, changing it without asking to May 24. After much hassle we finally got it changed back, a good thing as it turned out since an ash cloud from the erupting volcano in Iceland closed down all Scottish airports the following day. Then our ...

This weekend I am speaking at the dedication of a research center on the campus of Barry University named in honor of Drs. Paul and Margaret Brand.  I wrote three books with Paul Brand in the 1980s (Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, In His Image, and The Gift of Pain) and no one has influenced me more.  Paul Brand died in 2003 but Margaret, now in her nineties, spryly carries on an active life of violin-playing, lecturing, and great-grandmothering. For a ...