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Why is this day different from other days? Why is it that on all other days I set an alarm, but on this day I sleep in and take an afternoon nap?

“Practicing spiritual disciplines is life altering,” said Stephen Smith, InterVarsity alumnus and InterVarsity Press author.

My wife has a cherished collection of hand-painted, fine china tea cups that she keeps on the top shelf of a cupboard. These cups are kept separate from our ordinary coffee mugs and brought down from their place of safety and display on special occasions.

“No, I can’t. I’m so busy.” Those words are almost a reflex for us. A habit. A way for us to communicate our plight to someone else in five easy words or less. But never before has a more vague response been accepted and reciprocated by so many people to get out of all sorts of things. 

I get the same answer almost every time: “Bible study and prayer.” The scene looks like this: I sit down over coffee with a student who’s stuck in their walk with Christ, bored with the Christian life, and struggling to hear from or care about Jesus at all...

Poor is such a confusing word. We normally think of poverty as a bad thing, the kind of thing that shows up in shock-value statistics like 43 percent of people in the world live on less than $2 a day, or poverty causes the deaths of 22,000 children a day.

Mary’s song in Luke 1, traditionally called the “Magnificat,” is, for me, one of the most astonishing and challenging passages in the Bible.  

For the Urbana 12 Worship Team, food is very important. This is true theologically as we use the dinner table as a metaphor to discuss worship culture, but it’s also true practically as we get to know each other and celebrate different cultures over our meals.

In this month of Advent, our thoughts usually turn to Jesus and Mary. Yet lately I’ve found that I’m more drawn to Elizabeth. Perhaps it’s because I’m older. Or maybe it’s because I know what it’s like to yearn for something and then to see days, months, years pass without having that yearning fulfilled.