The Proper Place of Technology Cherie Harder Wednesday, June 3, 2021 Americans recently passed a new technological milestone: we now spend more time on devices than we do sleeping – as well as working, reading, caring for others, or any other activity. According to a recent study conducted by emarketer.com, the average American spends around eight hours per
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The Creative Work of Love Cherie Harder Wednesday, May 12, 2021 “Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys…. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. Recently, I was part
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MLK, Suffering, and Meaning Cherie Harder Wednesday, April 21, 2021 By any measure, these are times of deep and widespread suffering. More than 500,000 people have died from Covid since the pandemic struck. More than 100 mass shootings (defined as those resulting in four or more people injured or killed, not counting the perpetrator) have
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The Most Unsettling of Holidays Cherie Harder Wednesday, March 31, 2021 This reflection is an adaptation from an earlier version we featured nine years ago on April 6, 2012. While Easter is often celebrated with brunches, egg hunts, and candy trappings, properly understood, it should be the most unsettling of holidays. Its claims are both
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Christians and Conspiracy Cherie Harder Wednesday, March 10, 2021 A dark secret has emerged: Christians have a problem with conspiracy issues. Earlier this week, a fascinating and disturbing new study by the American Enterprise Institute indicated that more than a quarter of white evangelicals, the largest proportion of any demographic group, affirm part or all of the
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Ash Wednesday, Attention, and Invisible Gorillas Cherie Harder Wednesday, February 17, 2021 The following reflection has been adapted from an email update first published on February 13, 2013. Growing evidence confirms that it is really quite common to entirely miss the elephant (or gorilla) in the room. In attempting to better understand the nature of
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Lets Get Creative Cherie Harder Friday, January 8, 2021 It is hard to get the grotesque images from Wednesday’s storming of the Capitol out of one’s mind. The Confederate flag paraded in its halls, Members of Congress huddled under desks as police struggled to contain a stampede, the noose set up on the West Lawn,
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And There Was A Great Calm... Richard Miles Wednesday, November 11, 2020 Our extraordinary year has been described as a mashup of the 20th century’s most tumultuous years. Among those, 1918, the year of the pandemic that eventually killed 675,000 Americans, is held up as a mirror and a warning. The devastating influenza appeared as
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A New Beginning Cherie Harder Wednesday, November 4, 2020 As I write this, polls have only just started to close, and election results are hours (if not days, or even weeks) away. But regardless of the final outcome of this election, in many ways we begin a new season. As Atlantic columnist Joe Pinsker helpfully pointed out
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Not an Impossible Task Cherie Harder Wednesday, September 23, 2020 In times of deepening division and increasingly heated conflict, it can be awkward to remember that Christ’s commandments centered on love — loving God, and the gritty, hard, often seemingly thankless work of loving one’s neighbors (even the obnoxious ones). It is a task well
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