Spring is a powerful reminder that what we plant today matters tomorrow. Here is how you can prayerfully shape your grandchildren’s faith and trust God for the harvest.

7 Questions You Need to Answer before Beginning a Career in Ministry

Is it Wrong for Churches to Play Secular Music?

The average American adult’s screen attention time is 47 seconds. Two decades ago, it was 150 seconds. The generational trend line looks grimmer. Gen Z averages nearly two hours per day on TikTok. The average video watch time is between 15 and 30 seconds. That comes to watching an average of more than 300 videos. Per day. On one app. We can shake our heads and bemoan social media and “young people these days,” but without a theological grounding, we don’t have much basis for calling them to change. Life is often boring and painful. It’s full of disappointment and drudgery. Of course you’d want to escape that—people always have. Why not choose a relatively innocuous method of thumb-swiping over drugs, gangs, and unplanned pregnancies? The good news is there’s a third option. C. S. Lewis found an alternate path to holistic enjoyment: What if real life is found in receiving and pondering . . . real life? Quiddity In Surprised by Joy, Lewis shares a story about his lifelong friend A. K. Hamilton Jenkin, who helped Lewis develop attentiveness: Jenkin seemed to be able to enjoy everything; even ugliness. I learned from him that we should attempt a total surrender to whatever atmosphere was offering itself at the moment; in a squalid town to seek out those very places where its squalor rose to grimness and almost grandeur, on a dismal day to find the most dismal and dripping wood, on a windy day to seek the windiest ridge. There was no Betjemannic [detached and somewhat condescending] irony about it; only a serious, yet gleeful, determination to rub one’s nose in the very quiddity of each thing, to rejoice in its being (so magnificently) what it was. This is a Copernican transformation. What if the baking asphalt, gleaming aluminum, and thick exhaust of your 5:11 p.m. traffic jam isn’t a time to catch up on texts but to delight in your stuckness, your community of solitary drivers, and both the immutability and omnipresence of God? What if the monotonous flatness of this moment is a training ground for learning to discover texture? Quiddity means the “thatness” of something. Your house is in that neighborhood rather than another. Your spouse is wearing that shirt. You’re sitting in that chair with that view to eat that meal. Notice and appreciate that, instead of sinking into your phone because that isn’t enough. Develop Depth: Gratitude and Attentiveness How do you become a deep person? You can hear it in the word itself—it’s the desire to mine, uncover, excavate. That doesn’t happen in 14 seconds. One method, then, is through reading great books, but it’s not the only way. Lewis presents a method available to any person at any point in his or her day—practicing attentiveness. What if real life is found in receiving and pondering . . . real life? Start by giving thanks. Give thanks for everything: The people around you at this moment. The floor under your feet, the seat under your rear, the voices or white noise washing around you, the work you’re taking a break from right now. Giving thanks does two things for you. First and most important, you’re giving thanks to someone. In the act of thanksgiving, you’re made aware of more than an unfeeling, random universe. A Creator God made you and orchestrated the specifics of the world around you at this specific moment. He weaved them all together so you might delight in your surroundings and worship him for them. Second, giving thanks causes you to reflexively think about why: Why is there goodness to this person, place, or thing? You know God is good, which means his goodness can be found in everything. It then becomes a matter of tracing the sunbeam up to the sun. Gratitude births attentiveness. Cynicism and entitlement destroy it. If you’re writing an email, consider why that action is good. God has made the person receiving it. God has made words and communication. He’s given you the presence of mind in the moment to put your thoughts into words. You get to reflect God’s desire to share his mind and heart; to address and build up people he relates to. My Attempt I started this article one week into a winter inversion in Boise, Idaho. Clouds get stuck in the bowl of mountains we live in and everyone walks around sober-hungover from the merciless gray. Perfect. I’d challenge Lewis to find something more dismal and dripping. How do you become a deep person? You can hear it in the word itself—it’s the desire to mine, uncover, excavate. I stared at the heavy, depressed sky and didn’t flinch. What does God want me to see? I started giving thanks that “joy comes with the morning” (Ps. 30:5). Knowing that doesn’t only help in the morning, though. It helps in the gray and the waiting. There’s something sweet about the pang of expectation, waiting for a certain event at an uncertain time (Lam. 3:26). I was thankful for God’s steadfastness. His grace and promises aren’t contingent on how I feel them. When clouds cover the sky, the sun is still there. God’s favor, grace, and love are still working even when they’re obscured. I wanted to go further. It’s not merely hope for sunshine that connects me with God. God is good in clouds and gray. It’s good to feel quiet and subdued before God. “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isa. 30:15). God breathes through the ordinary stillness of life, as well as in the times of exuberant radiance. We need seasons of being laid low. We need reminders to walk in submission to God with our mouths still and our ears open so we can receive his strength. That’s how God met me in the thatness of a Boise winter. God wants to meet you in the thatness of whatever specific moment you’re in as well. Be attentive and give thanks. Live more by focusing on where you are.

Harriet Tubman’s life teaches us that sometimes it’s worth risking everything for justice and goodness. In a world that values safety and comfort, we need reminders that real change in society rarely comes from behind a keyboard. Crossway’s growing series of middle-grade biographies includes figures like Martin Luther, Katie Luther, John Bunyan, and Corrie ten Boom. Though we know less about Tubman’s theology than that of any other figures in the series, by all accounts she was driven by faith in Christ to risk her freedom and her life to lead others out of slavery. Shar Walker’s addition to the series, The Story of Harriet Tubman: The Trailblazer Who Led Many to Freedom, is an exciting, age-appropriate celebration of an American hero. I was delighted to interview Walker about her book. Why should Christians learn about Harriet Tubman? Harriet did extraordinary things, but she was also a deeply ordinary woman. Her life is relatable because she stood at the bottom of the social order of her day. She was black, a woman, and a person living with a disability that stemmed from a brain injury she received from a slave owner. Anyone who has ever felt invisible, unimportant, or unsure whether their life matters in God’s redemptive plan will likely find pieces of themselves in her story. In her own society—and even in ours today—she would probably be the last person we’d expect to shape history or advance God’s kingdom. Yet her life closely mirrors the men and women of Scripture—like Ruth, Daniel and his friends, and Esther—whose quiet, ordinary faithfulness believers still seek to follow. Based on your research, how would you describe Tubman’s faith? I think it’s important to recognize that Harriet’s expression of faith may not have looked like ours. She couldn’t read or write, so she didn’t have a traditional “quiet time.” While enslaved, her time wasn’t her own, and she had little space to study theology in formal ways.  This also meant her faith was not theoretical or overly intellectual. I would describe it as contemplative and, at times, even mystical—something she saw through visions and symbols and heard through liturgy and song, rather than something she primarily read on a page. Harriet did extraordinary things, but she was also a deeply ordinary woman. Her faith isn’t something we can neatly chart like our own, partly because of the limited firsthand accounts of her life that we have access to today. A few things we know with certainty: She communed with God through prayer and music, later became a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and is believed to have referenced Jesus’s promise to prepare a place in heaven for believers (John 14:2–3) in her final living moments. Most clearly, her actions often aligned with Christlike orthopraxy. The exact details of her theological convictions, however, remain something of a mystery. How did you balance the need to be clear about the brutality of race-based chattel slavery with the challenges of writing for a young audience? Why do you think it’s important to help 21st-century kids understand the evil of slavery in America? My goal was to tell the truth in a way that was clear and age-appropriate, while still acknowledging the real suffering inflicted through race-based chattel slavery. I wanted to be honest without becoming unnecessarily graphic or overwhelming. It took some work to strike a good balance. Too much detail about the trauma of slavery may have distracted from the heroine of the story, but too little might have left readers unsure why her actions mattered or how extraordinary they truly were. Helping children understand this part of our nation’s history equips them to be thoughtful observers and wise interpreters of their world. I often think of it like medicine: A doctor would never make a diagnosis without first understanding a patient’s history, and the same is true for a nation. Our past helps explain, in part, many of the race-based realities we see today, including how race-based chattel slavery played a foundational role in access to opportunity and generational wealth; it even shaped the physical layout of cities. What did you learn while researching Tubman’s life that surprised you the most? I had two aha moments as I studied Harriet’s life. The first was how deeply she loved and cherished her family. I believe this was her earliest motivation to fight for freedom. She certainly knew slavery was wrong and longed to see others freed, but at the beginning, she simply wanted to be reunited with the people she loved. Only later did she realize she was uniquely gifted for this work and continued rescuing others. My second aha moment was recognizing that, by today’s standards, Harriet would likely be considered a person living with a disability and chronic pain. That reality makes her courage and accomplishments even more remarkable. What is your favorite story about Tubman? I love the story of her rescue of Charles Nalle because it captures so many of her defining qualities—cleverness, persistence, and courage all at once. Helping children understand this part of our nation’s history equips them to be thoughtful observers and wise interpreters of their world. Nalle had escaped enslavement via the Underground Railroad but was arrested in Troy, New York, under the Fugitive Slave Law. Tubman donned a disguise, worked her way into the room where Nalle was being held, and put her body in harm’s way to enable his escape. Her bravery eventually led to his freedom through a sequence of events that seems too exciting to be a true story. I’m also moved by the moment she discovers that her husband, John Tubman, had remarried after she escaped enslavement. When she returned to lead him to the North, she was saddened to find he’d already taken another wife. That heartbreak humanizes her in a powerful way. It reminds us that even someone so brave and accomplished experienced deep personal loss.