The abuse of the concept of "calling" creates serious injury to people in the church and can lead to poor or cowardly choices. There is no need to spiritualize good desires. I started thinking about this when a friend told me that he's staying in his current city because he felt "called" there? I thought, "How does he know that?" Does God "call" people to ZIP codes? What is wrong with just saying that you want to live somewhere because you like the place? Why spiritualize it?

In The Culture of Cities, published in 1938, Lewis Mumford articulated a vision for the beauty of cities that many people have failed to appreciate. In contradistinction from the neo-agrarian romanticism of Wendell Berry and others, Mumford affirmed that "cities are a product of the earth." There is nothing in city life that keeps one from experiencing nature.

A new study suggests that today's white women seem less interested in having children than previous generations. According to the figures analyzed by the University of New Hampshire in a new demographic study, white women increasingly are delaying having children and having smaller families, while growing numbers of Hispanic women are having large families at conventional childbearing ages. As these trends continue, America will likely have a white minority by 2050.

The way of Jesus is the way of tears. While many Christians in Western Europe and North America tend to present a Christianity that rescues and protects us from pain and suffering, Christians in the rest of the world are fully aware that just as Christ learned obedience through tears and suffering, so will the rest of us. Suffering is the rule in the Christian life not the exception (Hebrews 5:8).