Opening:Compassion can be defined as "showing deep feelings of concern for those who are suffering and needy." Compassion can happen on mission a trip to Thailand to help others recover from a tsunami, or it ca...

Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds (1 Tim. 6:18).C.S. Lewis once wrote: "We never know how bad we are until we try to be good." Indeed—what an insight. Doing good—yes, being good̵...

Researchers have built what Chris Danforth calls "the Dow Jones index of happiness," using the frequency of key words culled from Twitter. Danforth and other researchers look at about 50 million tweets a day (a...

Teens who smoke cigarettes are far more likely—23 times more likely—to use marijuana, according to a study from Seattle Children's Research Institute and the University of Michigan. Those who smoked tobacco...

An Arkansas school district has decided to cancel sixth grade graduation ceremonies rather than remove a traditional opening prayer. A parent apparently requested the prayer be removed—a request followed ...

Joel Stein has written a cover story for the May 20 issue of Time magazine titled "Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation." The story quotes many of the same statistics we've recounted in our Youth Culture Update...

OpeningDeath, betrayal and separation are just a few of the things that can lead to grief and sadness in our everyday lives. Grief and sadness are powerful things in our lives because they remind us of how frag...

OpeningFear is an emotion that can take over your life. It can make you sick, keep you from trying new things and keep you from meeting new people. Someone once said, "Fear can keep us up all night long, but fa...

OpeningHave you ever thought about what life would be like without your family? Sometimes we have disagreements with members of our family but we would all agree that life without our families would not be good...

The BackdropHave you ever been in a situation in which the harder you try the more you fail? Maybe it was dieting; meeting homework deadlines; trying to stop one of those habitual, nagging sins; or maybe you ca...