Is Your Life Working? Most of us are trying to put together the jigsaw puzzle we call life without a very important piece. Over time this becomes incredibly frustrating. In this extraordinary book, Matthew Kelly powerfully demonstrates that we cannot live the life we have imagined, or experience the joy we yearn for, unless we learn to tend the soul. From there, with his classic style of practical wisdom, he teaches us how to remedy this problem. When our bodies are hungry, our stomachs growl. When our souls are hungry, we become irritable, restless, confused, overwhelmed, exhausted, anxious, discontent, and tend to focus on the things that matter least and neglect the things that matter most.

Lighten up! Most of us take ourselves too seriously. Christian leaders, in particular, are tempted by the position they hold, or the power they wield, to lose touch with their humanity, become arrogant, and alienate their followers. But what about our tendency to shoot ourselves in the foot, time and time again? Can we laugh at ourselves? David McKenna, a Christian college president, brings a lifetime of learning to this question. By confessing his own foibles and laughing at the ludicrous, he finds that God is laughing with him--not to ridicule, but to give the special grace that saves us from ourselves. The lessons are humbling when the laugh is on us, but they can lead to the discovery that a sense of humor is a partner with the witness of a joyful spirit. McKenna shows us by example how to lighten up and find God as we laugh at ourselves.

Humor has had a profound effect on the way the Jewish people see the world, and has sustained them through millennia of hardships and suffering. God Laughed reviews, organizes, and categorizes the humor of the ancient Jewish texts-the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, and Midrash-in a clear, readable, and accessible manner. These works have influenced the Jewish people in many ways, and all are replete with humor and wit. Inevitably, this oeuvre of Jewish humor has itself influenced generations of comics, as well as genres of humor. The authors use examples of Biblical humor from several broad categories, including irony, sarcasm, wordplay, humorous names, humorous imagery, and humorous situations. Because their primary purpose is not to entertain, but to teach humanity how to live the ideal life, much of the humor in the Talmud and the Midrash has a single purpose: to demonstrate that evil is wrong and even, at times, ludicrous. This may help explain why approximately 1,500 years after its closing, the Talmud is still such a fascinating work.

The content of this book has the intent to somehow expose the nature of God and his unparalleled ability to laugh. God's initial purpose and the most visible reason for God laughing in contrast to scripture is really only displayed for one reason, and that is when he makes fun and laughs at the calamity of the unrighteous because he sees that their day is coming for recompense and retribution. However, in conjunction with God laughing at the wicked in regards to their sinister plots to eradicate God's choice people, God also displays a sense of humor when he deals divinely and sovereignly with his children even though his sense of humor is oftentimes dry. It's God's unique humor nonetheless. However, it is this godly sense of humor that periodically leaves us, his children, chuckling at his ideologies, his peculiar way of doing things.

Growing up the son of agnostics, John Koessler saw a Catholic church on one end of the street and a Baptist on the other. In the no-man’s land between the two, this curious outside wondered about the God they worshipped—and began a lifelong search to comprehend the grace and mystery of God. A Stranger in the House of God addresses fundamental questions and struggles faced by spiritual seekers and mature believers. Like a contemporary Pilgrim’s Progress, it traces the author’s journey and explores his experiences with both charismatic and evangelical Christianity. It also describes his transformation from religious outsider to ordained pastor. John Koessler provides a poignant and often humorous window into the interior of the soul as he describes his journey from doubt and struggle with the church to personal faith