This was football played at the speed of ice hockey and the ball was in play for only 53 minutes of the 90. The Premiership at its highest level is enthralling, edge-of-the-seat stuff, but sometimes it is too fast and frenetic for its own good.

We are shaped by stories from the first moments of life, and even before. Stories tell us who we are, why we are here, and what will become of us. Whenever humans try to make sense of their experience, they create a story, and we use those stories to answer all the big questions of life. The stories come from everywhere--from family, church, school, and the culture at large. They so surround and inhabit us that we often don't recognize that they are stories at all, breathing them in and out as a fish breathes water.

This was football played at the speed of ice hockey and the ball was in play for only 53 minutes of the 90. The Premiership at its highest level is enthralling, edge-of-the-seat stuff, but sometimes it is too fast and frenetic for its own good.

A community, a family, is a group of people who share common stories. The health of any community depends directly on the health of the stories the community embraces.

It is simultaneously the blessing and the curse of the reflective Christian that believers are called to live out their faith in the church. No institution has accomplished so much for good in the world; none has fallen so short of its calling! The church is God-ordained, God-inspired, but accomplishes its work through human beings subject to every possible failing.

The ability to see our lives as stories rather than unrelated, random events increases the possibility for significant and purposeful action.

If you have been in the vicinity of the sacred - ever brushed against the holy - you retain it more in your bones than in your head; and if you haven’t, no description of the experience will ever be satisfactory.