When your life feels chaotic or stalled, remember this: God creates beauty out of disorder.

Hospitality doesn’t have to be flashy to be holy. This prayer helps you welcome others with warmth, grace, and the love of Christ—right where you are.

Grieving mothers can find solace and strength through God's promises, even in the depths of sorrow. Discover 7 Scriptures and prayers designed to comfort your tender heart and remind you that God's story never ends with ashes.

Winter is a long season for many of us. Cold temperatures cause us to stay indoors and reach for a warm blanket. During these colder months, it is the perfect time to try a new warm soup recipe. Even if you are someone who is not a huge fan of soup, you might find a recipe that you love. It could be you just haven’t tried the right soup yet!If you are a lover of soups, you have come to the right place. While many of us only associate soup with chicken noodle soup when we are sick, there are actually limitless soup recipes to try. In addition, it is also important to remember that you don’t have to be sick to enjoy soup. You can enjoy soup any time of year; however, it is much more popular to have soup in the cold winter months. Whether you want to try a new recipe this year or go back to an old favorite, soup is a staple for the winter months. Canned soup is delicious, but you might want to try to make soup from scratch this year. By making your own soup, it will enrich the nutritional value and decrease unhealthy aspects, such as the high salt content found in traditional canned soup. Nonetheless, if you want to try a new recipe for the cold days of winter, here are a few ideas:Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/rez-art

Embrace the spiritual significance of Advent as a time of joyful anticipation, reflection, and renewal, focusing on hope and God's promises. Discover global traditions and creative ways to craft meaningful Advent calendars and incorporate scripture readings into your family's journey toward Christmas.

This year marks the centennial of the Scopes Trial of 1925, one of the most famous moments in what has come to be called the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy. The controversy was actually a series of debates between theological conservatives (“fundamentalists”) and liberals (“modernists”) in several Protestant denominations in the years between the two world wars. The trial remains embedded in the American imagination a century later. It was a key skirmish in what’s often depicted as the great ideological conflict of the modern world: science versus religion. However, this telling is too simplistic. We don’t always remember the difference between historical fact and fiction. Sarah Irving-Stonebraker argues that Christian historians are called to be “priests of history” who steward the past in our ahistoric age. The Scopes Trial is a good example of how our imaginations sometimes play tricks on us when it comes to the past. Its hundredth anniversary is an opportunity to set the record straight. Heavyweight Lawyers In the 1920s, several states passed laws to outlaw the teaching of Darwinian evolution in public schools. In 1925, Tennessee passed an anti-evolution law called the Butler Act. John Scopes, a high school football coach and substitute biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, was charged with breaking that law. The ensuing trial took on a life of its own, shaping the way the American public thinks about the relationship between faith and culture. One reason the trial became big news was the key personalities involved. William Jennings Bryan, one of the most revered orators and politicians of the era, represented the state of Tennessee. Bryan, nicknamed the “Great Commoner,” was a three-time Democratic candidate for president and served as secretary of state under Woodrow Wilson. Bryan resigned from the Wilson administration in 1915 in response to Wilson’s diplomacy toward Germany, which Bryan correctly feared would lead America into World War I. Scopes was represented by Clarence Darrow, one of the greatest lawyers of his day. Darrow had become a household name in 1924 for his part in what many at the time called the “trial of the century.” Two wealthy Chicago teenagers, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, confessed to murdering a third teenager, Bobby Franks. Leopold and Loeb were influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche and wanted to commit the perfect crime, thus demonstrating they were Übermenschen (superior men). Though they were guilty of the crime, Darrow successfully defended an insanity plea on Leopold’s and Loeb’s behalf, which resulted in them being spared the death penalty. How the Trial Evolved Though The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes was ostensibly about whether or not Scopes violated the Butler Act, the wider creation-evolution debate soon became the central issue of concern. The skeptical journalist H. L. Mencken relentlessly lampooned fundamentalism and especially creationism. Mencken was especially hard on Bryan, whom he thought was a self-aggrandizing fundamentalist bumpkin. In the trial’s climactic moment, Bryan himself took the stand and was cross-examined by Darrow. The erudite agnostic Darrow humiliated Bryan, who had trouble answering the most common objections to creationism. We sometimes forget that the Scopes Trial ended in a legal victory for the plaintiffs. Scopes was convicted and fined, and he soon stopped teaching in Dayton. But the trial was also a public relations disaster for fundamentalism and contributed to the widespread acceptance of evolution in the ensuing years. Distraught by his encounter with Darrow, Bryan died ignominiously five days after the trial concluded. Bryan is better known today for his embarrassing performance in Dayton than for his long career of public service. We sometimes forget that the Scopes Trial ended in a legal victory for the plaintiffs. Popular memory about the Scopes Trial contains a lot of truth. Yet it also tends to frame the case as simply a matter of religious dogma versus open-minded scientific inquiry. However, historians know the actual events in Dayton were more complicated than they have often been portrayed. Staged Controversy The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), founded in 1920 to defend the Bill of Rights, announced it would finance a test case if a pro-evolution teacher in Tennessee was willing to come forward. For the ACLU, this was a matter of free speech. Civic leaders in Dayton saw an opportunity to attract attention to their city by hosting the trial. Both Dayton and fundamentalists got what they wanted out of the trial. The Scopes Trial put the city on the map. Star witnesses, noted journalists, and interested spectators from across the country descended on Dayton, boosting the local economy. Fundamentalists were pleased with the trial’s outcome, and historian Madison Trammel has demonstrated that fundamentalists remained engaged in anti-evolution activism well into the 1930s. After the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy subsided in the late 1930s, the creationists controlled most of the major Protestant denominations and the Federal Council of Churches. Postwar historians sympathetic to modernism later interpreted the Scopes Trial as a key moment in the decline of fundamentalist influence in American culture. The results were less positive for the ACLU, and especially for Scopes himself. While the ACLU got the test case it sought, it lost the trial. Across the South and Midwest, it remained illegal to teach Darwinism in public schools for decades. In Tennessee, the Butler Act remained on the books until 1967. Scopes was fined $100 and lost his job. He left Dayton to continue his graduate studies in geology at the University of Chicago, though he never escaped the shadow of the trial and remained bitter about it for the rest of his life. Scopes also long claimed that the students who testified against him in court never heard him discuss evolution in class. Theatrical Reimagination What most Americans know about the Scopes Trial comes not from history courses but from two influential works of fiction. In 1955, the events were dramatized in a play titled Inherit the Wind. In 1960, a theatrical version of Inherit the Wind was released, starring Spencer Tracy in the role of Henry Drummond, a fictional stand-in for Darrow. Scopes also long claimed that the students who testified against him in court never heard him discuss evolution in class. The backdrop for these fictional versions of the trial isn’t really the evolution debate but McCarthyism. In the early 1950s, controversial Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy became the public face of conservative efforts to curtail communism’s spread in American culture. McCarthy believed Hollywood and the Department of State were both riddled with communists, and his career ended in disgrace when his claims were proven exaggerated. McCarthyism became a watchword for reactionary, conspiratorial conservatism. In Inherit the Wind, creationists were proxies for McCarthy and his allies: culturally backward, superstitious, and anti-intellectual. Matthew Harrison Brady, the fictional stand-in for Bryan, was portrayed as a particularly pathetic foil to the sympathetic Drummond. Inherit the Wind has been performed as a stage play countless times over the past 70 years, and the film has been remade three times, as recently as 1999. In his Pulitzer Prize–winning book Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion, Edward Larson argues our cultural memory of the Scopes Trial has been filtered through these fictional depictions. Our historical memory isn’t always as reliable as we’d like to think. This is one reason the church needs faithful historians who can help us understand what really happened in the past, as reconstructed through the best evidence available, regardless of what we think we remember (or maybe even want to remember).

Since I started working in a secular environment, I have started struggling as a Christian. Help! If you’re employed, your work environment may occupy the largest portion of your time. So it’s wise to pause and analyze the effect that environment has on you and your ability to faithfully live out the Christian life. Before we look at a few causes for struggle in the secular work environment, it’s important to check our understanding of what it means to be a Christian in every area of life. I’m often reaching for a better descriptive word than “secular,” which we use to label the many vocations that exist outside of church walls. For a place to truly be secular, it has to be void of all things spiritual. That doesn’t make sense for a Christian, does it? We belong to God everywhere we go, and we take his indwelling Holy Spirit with us. No space we enter is truly secular. We belong to God everywhere we go, and we take his indwelling Holy Spirit with us. No space we enter is truly secular. Even so, I know from both personal experience and conversations with other working Christians that workplace struggles can challenge our faith and the depth of our relationship with God. Because this is such a broad topic, let’s look at a few common reasons Christians may struggle in their work environment. The nature of your difficulties will often determine the path forward. 4 Workplace Challenges Because this is such a broad topic, let’s look at a few common reasons Christians may struggle in their work environment. The nature of your difficulties will often determine the path forward. 1. Conflicting Values or Ethical Dilemmas In some workplaces, the prevailing worldview is far from biblical. You may face consistent challenges to your obedience to God and your commitment to his laws. Perhaps you work in marketing and you’re being asked to design a campaign that celebrates sin. Maybe you’re on a sales team that consistently bends the truth to win the sale, and you’re being asked to do the same with your prospects. If you’re in such a space, the biblical response is clear. We aren’t only to turn away from our sin (Acts 3:19) but also to avoid any appearance of it (1 Thess. 5:22, KJV). Take steps to ensure you aren’t participating in or appearing to support sin. This can require courage and boldness. You may need to ask to be removed from a project that doesn’t align with your biblical values. You may need to request changes to the wording in a sales pitch before you can attach your name to it. I’ve seen many cases where these moments of courage have been met with respect and accommodations. If that isn’t the case in your work environment, it may be worth asking yourself if you can remain there while faithfully walking the Christian life and honoring God’s laws and standards. 2. Weariness Caused by Continuous Exposure to Darkness Maybe you aren’t facing ethical dilemmas at work, but you’re surrounded by individuals celebrating sin or walking in darkness. Maybe Jim makes crude jokes and even pokes fun at Christianity. Maybe Erica’s behavior is marked by gossip, bitterness, and dishonesty. This can sometimes lead to feelings of helplessness (I wish they knew there was a better way to live, but what can I do?). Other times, it leads to a general feeling of weariness (How many more days can I sit and listen to all this?). Think not only about how your environment affects you but also about how Christ can affect your environment through you. If this is your story, think not only about how your environment affects you but also about how Christ can affect your environment through you. Instead of seeing your coworkers as people who are making work more difficult for you, try to view them as fellow image-bearers in deep need of a Savior and the hope he provides. As Christians, we’re called to be the light of the world (Matt. 5:13–16). Pray. Ask his Holy Spirit to guide you in showing up well at work. Influence your surroundings by living in contrast to them and reflecting Jesus’s love. 3. Conviction as a Result of Acclimating to Darkness You might be feeling uncomfortable because the Holy Spirit is at work in your heart, convicting you. Maybe you haven’t been showing up as a light. Instead, you’ve acclimated to the darkness. Over time, you decided it was easier and less disruptive to go with the flow. What began as quietly listening in on crude conversations turned into laughing at crude jokes and, eventually, sharing a few of your own. The projects or initiatives that used to make you feel uneasy now feel comfortable. After months of noticing a culture of unhealthy competition and putting others down to get ahead, you start to play the game yourself. If you’ve been slowly adjusting to your surroundings, it’s time to realign with the Father. Repent of any sin you’ve fallen into and seek his wisdom and guidance in thriving as a Christian in a challenging environment. It might be worth pulling in a Christian mentor to hold you accountable. 4. Your Relationship with Your Career Is Starving Your Relationship with God Sometimes, the struggle is less about sin and more about the sheer amount of time and energy your career requires of you. Maybe you have little margin in your day left after work and all of life’s other commitments. Your faith is becoming lukewarm because you’re no longer rooted in prayer or time in the Word. If this is the case for you, focus on reassessing your priorities and protecting time to nurture core spiritual disciplines. 3 Spiritual Solutions We can meet these workplace challenges with spiritual solutions. Consider three important ones. 1. Prayer Start your day with focused prayer and get into the rhythm of praying without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17). Integrate prayer into your workday. Pray for teammates. Pray over meetings. Pray over decisions. Those quiet prayers lifted up from your desk take little time and keep you rooted in God throughout the day. Praying regularly reminds you of your need to depend on Christ in all situations, especially in the hard dynamics of your workplace. 2. Scripture Study Identify when in your day you can realistically spend time in God’s Word. Get creative. Where do you see flexible pockets in your schedule? Could you read while eating your lunch? Could you listen to an audio Bible during your commute? Could you replace some of your television time or social media time? Intentional, regular Bible study will give you the tools you need to navigate ethical challenges with God’s wisdom. 3. Fellowship Time with other believers will help hold you accountable to your Christian walk. Make sure you’re engaged in a local church for weekly worship. Find other Christians in your workplace. Join a Bible study group or church life group. Seek out and actively nurture Christian fellowship. Honest conversations with other believers will help you better diagnose your workplace challenges and brainstorm ways to approach them. Not only that, but Christian friends can pray for you during the week, encourage you after a rough day, or check up on you in a difficult season. Your spiritual health is more important than your career. Ask the Lord to use your secular workplace to sanctify you and bring you (and hopefully others) closer to him.

On My Shelf helps you get to know various writers through a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their lives as readers. I asked Michael McEwen—a pastor, publisher, and author of The Devil Reads Nietzsche: A Public Theology for the Post-Christian Age—about what’s on his bedside table, his favorite fiction, the books he regularly revisits, and more. What’s on your nightstand right now? With my position as publisher, my time is primarily consumed with our authors’ manuscripts. Yet there are a few I’m slowly digesting. First, Nijay Gupta’s The Affections of Christ Jesus: Love at the Heart of Paul’s Theology. I’ve long admired Nijay’s research as well as his superhuman ability to write an enormous number of books. If we were to poll believers on some evergreen topics in Paul’s epistles, we may hear “righteousness,” “law,” “gospel,” and a short list of other answers. Rarely are “love” or “affections” on that short list. Through his typical conversational tone, Nijay rightly (re)introduces readers to the topic of love that permeates the corpus of Paul’s letters. As in many of his other books, Nijay has learned how to write in a way that dances between exegesis and dialogue—a skill worth emulating in academia. Second, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Lamott is a gifted writer, but she’s also gifted at teaching writing. One of my daily responsibilities is to help writers cultivate ideas as well as develop a technical excellence in communicating those ideas, so Lamott has served as a type of literary mentor lately. In fact, if I could use a few other metaphors for Lamott, she’s also a literary psychiatrist and counselor. I often found myself being counseled and comforted by her. As I read her, it seemed she was reading me. She understood my frustrations with word choice and ideation; she counseled my heart and my hopes to write even if the path of words leads to a dead-end street; like a mother, she provided harsh reprimand and encouragement when needed. I believe Bird by Bird is an essential read for beginning and seasoned writers. What are your favorite fiction books? This is easy. First, John Steinbeck. His fiction has an unparalleled ability to describe the topographies of California; he makes that western coastland feel like a primary, living character in his books. Also, I’m a hopeless romantic of fictional writers who adopt and adapt biblical themes in their writings, so I admire how he doesn’t shy away from adapting biblical names and topics in his works. Additionally, I cannot overlook my favorite short-story fiction writer, Flannery O’Connor. I even have a portrait of her hanging in my church office. She was a genius at confronting the grotesque with the raw reality of grace. Her culturally subversive faith—the idea that grace often shows up in the middle of our biggest messes—is incredibly powerful, and I believe the church in America can learn much from O’Connor’s subversive themes as we’re postured toward culture. What biographies or autobiographies have most influenced you and why? Unfortunately, I’ve never been a big biography or autobiography fan, but the last one I read was Bob Dylan’s Chronicles: Volume 1. In this book, Dylan treated every word like a doctor holds a scalpel: every word mattered. I absorbed his stories on writing droughts, learning that even the poets of our day are weathered by the seasons of writing. The church in America can learn much from O’Connor’s subversive themes as we’re postured toward culture. In February 2026, I am anticipating Eric Smith’s John Broadus biography, Between Worlds: John A. Broadus, the Southern Baptist Seminary, and the Prospects of the New South. In a nutshell, Broadus was a cofounder of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he also helped establish the Sunday School Board (now Lifeway Christian Resources). In a time when biblical literacy was scarce, Broadus’s preaching, lecturing, and publishing created a fertile environment for theological education. His legacy still shapes how Christian books and study materials are developed today. What are some books you regularly reread and why? This one is easy to answer. I cycle through Augustine’s Confessions at least once a year. Augustine captured my attention and affections in my first semester in seminary, and he’s been an ancient friend of mine for years. Throughout his work, Augustine wrestles with everyday topics including doubt, hopelessness, sin, time, grace, evil, and even helicopter moms (reader: that’s not a typo). His faith wasn’t abstract, as much as some may want to portray Augustine as hyper-Platonic. His faith was gritty, raw, and earthy. Philosophical questions and quests were, for Augustine, longings for deep communion with the triune God here and now. Ultimately, he interweaves existential and theological questions as doxological forms of prayer. Confessions is certainly an invitation for me to orient my daily life doxologically. I cannot forget to mention Kevin Vanhoozer’s works here, including The Drama of Doctrine and First Theology. As I was rummaging among topics of doctrine, liturgy, and the Christian life around 2010, a professor suggested I read Vanhoozer. Drama of Doctrine primed my imagination to see every arena of my life as a divine theater—not in any superficial sense of religious performance. Instead, Vanhoozer pulled the curtains back on my eyes to see life as a terrestrial stage of God’s inbreaking presence. Vanhoozer’s works have discipled me professionally, pastorally, and personally. Not only am I grateful for his scholarship, but I always salivate to read his next project. What books have most profoundly shaped how you serve and lead others for the sake of the gospel? Will Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality. It’s certainly not written from a Christian perspective, yet it imports teachings, topics, and themes of Scripture. For instance, Guidara teaches leaders that the pursuit of excellence in any skill requires a pursuit of human connection and genuine care. True leaders, Guidara believes, are masters of both technical excellence and profound human hospitality. I found myself highlighting so many sections of his book. True leaders are masters of both technical excellence and profound human hospitality. For my role as publisher of an academic imprint, I want us to be known for how we treat our authors by extending a degree of unreasonable hospitality to them. Practically speaking, this requires attentive listening, a fellowshiping of ideas, a thoughtful choice of cover art, our marketing endeavors, and, ultimately, how we treat the author through all those processes. What’s one book you wish every pastor would read? Such a difficult question because I want to list four or five books. My go-to book for pastors, especially younger ones, is Eugene Peterson’s The Pastor: A Memoir. Peterson exemplified the role of pastor-theologian. As he narrates in his book, he longed to be a professor, yet he became a pastor for over three decades. Within his pastoral ministry, he didn’t disconnect pastor from theologian but powerfully interwove the two callings. Peterson’s pastoral-theological framework has directly influenced my own. It’s not uncommon for me to use Petersonian phrases like “long obedience in the same direction.” As someone who has pastored a small, rural church for almost a decade, I don’t want to leave it. Selfishly, I do desire to grow old with our church to embody “long obedience in the same direction” with the saints at Hickory Grove Baptist Church. How does reading and understanding Nietzsche help us grasp our current cultural moment? Ah, my friend Friedrich Nietzsche. In my recent book, The Devil Reads Nietzsche, I try to invite the reader into a posture of hearing Nietzsche well. We know him as the atheist philosopher who advocated for the death of God, and we unfortunately stop there. Within the book, I’m dialoguing with six topics intimately familiar to Nietzsche and especially to us today: theology, identity, meaning/morality, truth, faith, and hope. I excavate Nietzsche’s take on these areas to illustrate the various ways he has undeniably influenced how we now imagine these categories in modern American stories, practices, and perspectives. As the late Alasdair MacIntyre noted, we all see through a Nietzschean lens, so my book tries to reveal those lenses. In modeling a charitable reading of Nietzsche, I invite the reader to hear someone else—the Other—as a hospitable act that Christ calls us to, and I’d even add that charity is missional because it seeks what is lost and broken (Luke 15). When Nietzsche is read charitably, he is sought after in order to be known and understood, not used or vilified. I’m convinced this Christlike posture has direct import for our cultural apologetics: to hear, to understand, and to seek the Other. What are you learning about life and following Jesus? Right now, I’m being challenged in my dad era. Four kids have my wife and me running four directions between the two of us, so I’ve been learning much about the spiritual fruits of joy and faithfulness (Gal. 5:22–23). Those two fruits have been before my eyes for months now. I’ve been watching my children grow quickly and my beard grow even whiter. I’m slowly realizing that I can’t control time, so I’m learning how to discover joy within this plane of finitude as well as the faithful God who, in his infinite goodness, sustains and matures my family.