Life, As I Find It In 1843 Charles Dickens was in trouble. After writing a series of best-selling novels – The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and Nicholas Nickleby, he had seen a down-turn in his popularity. The serialized The Old Curiosity Shop had proven controversial due to the heart wrenching death of a main character,
Finding Truth in “It’s a Wonderful Life” (Part II of II) In part one, we looked at the different themes that run through the film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Today, we will examine why it seems that Pope Francis should like this film and the fact that it succeeded even when many did not consider
Finding Truth in “It’s a Wonderful Life” (Part I of II) Life, As I Find It In 1945, Academy Award-winning director Frank Capra returned to feature-filmmaking after spending the previous five years serving his country during World War 2. He was nervous. Did he still have the right creative sensibilities to produce films people would
Life, As I Find It There is a pitiable verse in Psalm 31 about being like the “dead unremembered” – a broken pot, discarded and forgotten. It is a visceral lament. Few, if any of us, would want to die believing we had contributed so little to the lives of those who knew us that
Life, As I Find It My friend Anne called in a state of great agitation about her husband Jack. They had been arguing, she explained, and now she hoped I might talk to her husband before he succumbed to despair. I was alarmed. I wasn’t sure how I could be of help – I’m not
Life, As I Find It While working on the notes for C.S. Lewis’ The Annotated Screwtape Letters, I decided to do a little reading about the real world of demons. I picked up Hostage To The Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Contemporary Americans by Malachi Martin, a remarkable study that was meticulously researched
Life as I See It I have written elsewhere that the genius of Anglicanism was in its integration of aspects of Catholicism with Reformation thought. As a Protestant, this was appealing to me because of its familiarity. As someone who didn’t know much about Catholicism, I didn’t realize just how Catholic many of its practices
Life, As I Find It As I’ve written elsewhere, my formative years were spent as a Baptist. Then, after a move to Southern California in the second half of the 1980s, I attended a variety of non-denominational Evangelical Churches. I have described that period as a spiritual wilderness for me, as I was alienated by
In the late 1980s, many Evangelical Churches engaged in what was then-called the Seeker Movement. Essentially, it was a well-intentioned effort by churches to use a variety of marketing principles and programs to draw people inside. To an extreme, some churches went out of their way to avoid any resemblance to traditional churches at all
The Search for Something More Part I of II Life, As I Find It By the end of 1984, I thought the direction of my life was fairly established. I’d been writing dramas for my church for the previous five years, at times spending 20 to 30 hours at the church taking part in a
