Featured

God’s Purpose in Your Pain
What good could suffering possibly serve? A pastor reflects on what he has learned from losing a son to suicide.
Rick Warren
Essay
Letters from a Vanishing Friend
What’s it like to succumb to Alzheimer’s? A woman with dementia befriended me, her teenage neighbor.
Lisabeth Button
Essay
The Dust on All the Faces
In south Madagascar, farming families battle to survive a lethal drought caused by climate change.
Navid Kermani
Report
Two Thousand Years of Christian Strangeness
A podcasting scholar sums up the history of pain in two artworks and the lives of three illustrious women.
Tom Holland
Interview
Felix Manz: The Making of a Young Radical
In a city astir with dangerous new ideas, the son of a priest becomes a leader of a nonviolent revolution.
Jason Landsel
Comic

From the Editor

In Search of Solace
A pastor who lost a son to cancer probes the problem of pain.
Randall Gauger
Editorial

Insights

Saving Friends: What I’ve Learned from Insufferable Patients
A difficult patient teaches her doctor a better approach to medicine.
Brewer Eberly
Essay
Chinese Christians’ Costly Allegiance
A house church pastor imprisoned in China calls Christians to face repression boldly.
Wang Yi
Essay
The Speaking Tree
In an Anglo-Saxon poem, a tree becomes the meeting place of horror and joy.
Eleanor Parker
Essay
The Way of the Passion
Five readings from across the centuries illuminate the meaning of suffering in Christian discipleship.
Reading
The Communion of Empty Hands
The beloved Uruguayan author portrays an Easter service behind bars.
Eduardo Galeano
Reading
Baptism Means Leaving Home to Find It
How do you make an inherited tradition your own? A young Hutterite reckons with the legacy of his forebears.
Julian Waldner
Essay
On Planting Sugar Maples
How do you pass on a legacy, and how do you receive one?
David Johnson
Lives

Web Exclusives

The Mind in Pain
When depression takes hold, why does even God seem to fall silent?
James Mumford
The Unutterable Silence of God
After my father died, I thought I’d escaped the pain through nihilism. In that emptiness, God found me.
Esther Maria Magnis
Oberammergau’s Broken Vow
The world’s most famous Passion play is powerful theater. There’s a hole at its heart.
Joy Marie Clarkson

Arts & Letters

Poem: “Zeal”
Oh, to imagine I’m shielding You, when You’re / secure as a chant in a red hymnal, / hope of our eyes. …
Sofia M. Starnes
Poetry
Poem: “Winter”
Boris Dralyuk translates a poem by the Russian poet Julia Nemirovskaya: “Here it is, my dearest winter, / dearer than the fall or spring…”
Julia Nemirovskaya
Boris Dralyuk
Poetry
Editors’ Picks: Demon Copperhead
Barbara Kingsolver’s novel reimagines a Dickens classic in 1990s Appalachia.
Chris Zimmerman
Editors’ Pick
Editors’ Picks: How to Inhabit Time
In part personal memoir, in part philosophical reflection, James K. A. Smith’s How to Inhabit Time is a compelling read.
Joy Marie Clarkson
Editors’ Pick
Editors’ Picks: Faith, Hope and Carnage
Nick Cave’s and Seán O’Hagan’s Faith, Hope and Carnage is a record of an unabashed longing for God.
Elizabeth Oldfield
Editors’ Pick