Perspective

The next time you find yourself rotting in bed or going through the motions of another boring day, think about your older self. This is what TikTok creator @sonyatrachsel does when she’s in a funk. She’ll have what she calls a “time traveling day,” and it’s an outlook that’s resonating on the app.

On a time traveling day, Sonya will pretend that her 80-year-old self gets to come back to this exact moment and relive it. “You have to get real with it,” she said. “Close your eyes, imagine yourself sitting in your mansion on a chair, and then poof — you’re here today.”

There are so many reasons why Sonya’s “time traveling” trend has struck a chord. For one, it might make you emotional to think about your older self getting the chance to come back to a younger body for a day, kind of like a second chance.

This is a really beautiful way to frame your thoughts, practice gratitude, and think about what you would do if you had youth on your side again. Would you ride a bike? Go for a walk? Learn something new? Would you linger longer in the park and stare at the flowers? Be more adventurous?

Even mundane moments, like waiting in line, can become more meaningful when you think about how excited your 80-year-old self would be to come back to do it all over again. “It just becomes part of the experience,” she said.

This sweet and thoughtful approach to living can help you notice and appreciate the little things around you, but it can also inspire you to do more, live more, and have more fun. So, get up, get out there, and give your 80-year-old self a story to tell.

In her comments, someone wrote, “You just changed my life.” Another said, “This is genius! Don’t take your youth for granted.” “Thank you,” one commenter wrote under the video. “When I read this, I got up out of bed so fast.”

In an issue of CT magazine, E.F. Gregory shares the following story of how a persecuted pastor in China prayed for her during the devastating fires in Southern California:

On January 7, 2025, a series of devastating wildfires erupted in the Los Angeles area. As I drove home to Alhambra, strong winds and sirens filled the air, and flames were visible in the mountains. As I drove, strong winds threatened to push my car to the curb. Broken tree branches littered the streets. The Eaton Fire was igniting near Altadena, a suburb north of my location. The community of Altadena would soon be severely affected by the fire.

The Los Angeles wildfires were catastrophic, killing at least 29 people, destroying nearly 17,000 structures, and displacing over 100,000 individuals. The sheer scale of the disaster is overwhelming, making it difficult to know how to respond.

A phone call with Pastor Zhang from eastern China offered a different perspective. While facing persecution and challenges in his ministry, Zhang relies heavily on prayer and a network of believers. When he learned about the fires near my home, he prayed for my family and our community.

Zhang’s thoughtful, empathetic questions surprised me. After all, we were meeting to talk about how he felt to know that Christians outside of China are interceding for his community. Instead, Zhang was remembering and praying for me.

Zhang's empathy was striking, especially given the isolation Chinese Christians often feel from the global Christian community. He emphasized that prayer unites believers across distances and cultures. "We pray for all parts of the world," he said, including the California fires, asking for God's mercy and grace. For Zhang, the fires were an opportunity to connect the struggles of his church with those of mine.

Recent years have been particularly challenging for Chinese Christians due to increased persecution. Zhang said, “In the latter half of the last century, the Chinese church was like an orphan, separated from the family of the universal church.”

Despite these challenges, Zhang believes prayer is a mutual act that strengthens relationships between believers worldwide. Zhang prayed that the disaster in Los Angeles would bring American Christians together to demonstrate God's care for the affected communities.

As we grieve our losses, I’m comforted and humbled to know that the persecuted church is interceding on our behalf. This is why I believe that praying for the church in China is more important than ever. When they suffer, I also suffer. But prayer does not move in only one direction. If I focus only on caring for my Chinese brothers and sisters without allowing them to care for me, we are not in real relationship. We need to pray for one another.

In 1979 Dr. Ellen Langer, a Psychology Professor at Harvard, designed a weeklong experiment for a group of 75-year-old men. The men knew very little about the nature of the experiment, except that they would be gone for a week. When the men arrived, they were told that for the coming week they were to pretend it was 1959 (not 1979) the time when these 75-year-old men were only 55-years-old. They were told to dress and act like they did at that time. They were given ID badges with pictures of themselves in their mid-50s.

Over the course of that week, they were instructed to talk about President Eisenhower (as though he were still President) and other events in their lives that had happened at that time. They were to talk about their old jobs like they were working in them now, and not as if they had retired from them. Copies of LIFE magazine and the Saturday Evening Post from 1959 were displayed on coffee tables. Everything was designed to make them see through the lens of their 55-year-old selves.

Before this retreat the men were tested on every aspect of life that we assume deteriorates with age. By the end of the retreat most of the men had improved in every one of these categories. For example, they were significantly more flexible, had better posture, and even much improved hand strength. Their average eyesight improved by almost 10%, as did their performance on tests of memory. In more than half the men intelligence increased as well. Their physical appearance changed. Random people who did not know anything about the experiment were shown pictures of the men before and after the experiment and asked to guess their age. Based on these objective ratings the men were described as looking on average three years younger than when they arrived.

Professor Langer demonstrated that even when objectively nothing has changed about us, simply having a different mindset can powerfully shape our reality.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In Ephesians 4:24-5:2, the Apostle Paul observed that when a person adopts a new mindset, not because they have been tricked into a different way of thinking because of their surroundings but, based on the reality of being made new creations, they can experience a profound transformation.

How do you make sense of the problem of pain and the wonder of beauty occurring in the same world? If you’ve ever had the privilege of visiting the Louvre in Paris, you probably braved the crowds to get a glimpse of the statue of Venus de Milo.

Millions have been captivated by the woman’s physical beauty displayed in stunningly smooth marble. They’ve also been disturbed by seeing her arms broken off. Somehow the damage done to her arms doesn’t destroy the aesthetic pleasure of viewing the sculpture as a whole. But it does cause a conflicted experience—such beauty, marred by such violence.

I doubt if anyone has ever stood in front of that masterpiece and asked, “Why did the sculptor break off the arms?” More likely, everyone concludes the beautiful parts are the work of a master artist and the broken parts are the results of someone or something else—either a destructive criminal or a natural catastrophe.

We need a unified perspective on created beauty and marred ugliness that can make sense of both. The Christian faith provides that. It points to a good God who made a beautiful world with pleasures for people to enjoy. But it also recognizes damage caused by sinful people. Ultimately, it points to a process of restoration that has already begun and will continue forever.

After so many years of fame, the actress Angelina Jolie has resigned herself to some elements of its bargain. The constant gaze of paparazzi means other people have chosen how they want to see her.

Jolie says, “Since I was young, people liked the part of me that’s pretty tough and maybe a bit wild—that’s the part that I think people enjoy. I’m not the one [who] you want to hear about my pain or my sadness. You know, that’s not entertaining.”

Jolie plans to eventually leave L.A. “I grew up in quite a shallow place,” she says. “Of all the places in the world, Hollywood is not a healthy place. So, you seek authenticity.”

When Desirae Kelly woke at 5am, she knew something was off. Kelly felt an unsettling fluttering sensation in her right ear, but initially dismissed it, thinking it was the comforter on her bed. She only sought medical attention after being persuaded by her fiancé.

Sitting in the clinic's waiting room, Kelly felt the mysterious movement again, this time accompanied by pain near her eardrum. By this point Kelly thought it was earwax. The nurse, however, made a startling revelation. There was something in her ear, and it was moving.

The nurse treated Kelly's ear by irrigating it with water, which prompted a black object to fall onto her sweater. To her horror, it was a live spider, about the size of a nickel. Fortunately, there was no damage to her eardrum, and no medication was required to prevent infection.

Despite the reassurance that her ear was free of spider remnants or eggs, the incident left a lasting impact on Kelly. Every night since the traumatic event, she has worn earplugs, unable to shake the uneasy and violating feeling of a spider crawling out of her ear.

Possible Preaching Angle:

We need God's help to be truly aware of what's going on inside. If we're not careful about how we live, and if we're not faithful to practice a rhythm of self-examination, we might be surprised by the ugliness we find in our own selves.

Navy Seal Admiral, William McRaven, talks about an important lesson Seals learn: Think first of others. In an interview with AARP, he said:

I like to tell the story of Sgt. Maj. Chris Faris, my right-hand man in Afghanistan. One day, I did a Zoom call with my doctor, and she told me I’d been diagnosed with cancer. I needed to go back to the States immediately to have my spleen removed and start chemotherapy. She added, “Your military career is probably over.”

When I got back to my office, Chris was there, and he noticed something wasn’t right. After I told him, he said, “OK, boss, we’ve got the morning briefing coming up, and you need to be there. The troops are counting on you.”

So, we did the video teleconference with thousands of our team members around the world. And before I could say anything, Chris asked someone to put up a list of the people who’d been injured in combat the night before. Then he gave me a look, and I knew what it meant. I had a problem, but it paled in comparison to what these young men and women were going through. That was exactly the right thing to tell me at the time. It helped put my minor problem in perspective.

A couple's destination wedding was almost in jeopardy when their dog, Chickie, chewed up the groom's passport just days before the wedding. Donato Frattaroli and Magda Mazri connected five years prior when Magda worked at Donato’s restaurant. After three years of friendship, the couple began dating, and eventually began to plan their dream wedding at a destination in Italy, where they both have family and friends.

After eighteen months of planning and preparation, it seemed like everything was set. But just days before departure, Chickie ruined everything by chewing up Donato’s passport.

“It’s hard to describe," said Donato when he first saw the damaged passport. "It’s not like all the joy left me, but it was definitely panic.” Magda laughs when remembering the incident, because she had to act quickly to ensure their plans would stay intact. She says Donato is usually the calm one, but on that day she was able to put into practice everything she’d learned from their relationship, and quickly took charge.

They explored the possibility of obtaining a same-day passport, but the availability of appointments proved to be a major hurdle. They were willing to travel anywhere in the country to secure a passport, but with the help of local officials, managed to secure an appointment in their hometown of Boston several days later.

Reflecting on the passport ordeal, the couple found perspective during a complicated journey home after their honeymoon in France. They encountered missed flights, cancellations, and a challenging return to Boston via Amtrak. Through these trials, they learned to adapt and pivot, a valuable lesson for their journey together as a married couple.

Possible Preaching Angle:

When mishaps occur, accidents take place, or circumstances turn tragic, God is capable of supernaturally transforming our tragedies into triumph--and even if they don't work out the way we want, God will always remain with us.

In CT magazine, singer-songwriter Sandra McCracken writes:

I bought my Santa Cruz acoustic guitar a few years ago at a used music shop in Tennessee. It is sturdy and well made, crafted by hand. A close look at the grain of the wood of my guitar reveals a catalog of past experiences. The instrument’s smoothed surface is a visual timeline, tiny stripes shaped by years of rain and drought. An instrument’s sound tells us something of its origin, whether it is made from new or old or sunken or recycled wood.

A luthier is a craftsperson who builds string instruments the old-fashioned way. Ben Niles’s 2007 documentary Note by Note follows the making of a single Steinway concert piano from the Alaskan forest to the concert hall. Technicians describe their work on a concert grand which, at one stage of the manufacturing process, rests on its side for 12 patient months as the wood of its frame conforms into a piano-shaped curve.

But in real life, transition can foster impatience, like wearing braces or anticipating a wedding after a proposal. During the slow work, we may wonder who we are as we wait for what’s yet to be revealed in us.

But there is a grain written in our design, and we have a skillful designer who first made us and is now forming us into who we are meant to be. During our gradual transformation, we become acquainted with God, who personally and graciously tends to us. He is both the creator and luthier, shaping instruments of his glory. “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:10).

If, decades ago, we had been there in the forest where my Santa Cruz guitar began, if we had witnessed a tiny Adirondack spruce seed sprouting, vulnerable to every storm and footstep, we would surely doubt that the guitar I now hold in my hands could ever be made. Yet here it is, slowly formed and beautiful. And this gives me hope. God will one day cause us to resonate his love like a well-tuned instrument. Not on the merits of our performance but through God’s own hands, skillfully activating within us the melody of heaven.

Possible Preaching Angle:

To become who God is making us takes time and trust.

Eight in ten Americans agree society puts too much value on appearing youthful. A survey examined perspectives around aging and found that most agree that in today’s world there’s a negative bias around aging or the perception of being old—so much so that six in ten avoid sharing their age for fear of being “judged.”

But a new poll also identified the benefits of getting older. 75% of the respondents agreed that age is not something to fight or fear, but rather an opportunity to live a more fulfilling and emotionally healthy life. Two-thirds of respondents actually feel younger than they are—nearly a decade younger, on average.

The survey found that three in four people want to spend less time fighting aging and more time doing things they love. Jim Burkett, president of Great Lakes Wellness said, “While ‘anti-aging’ has become the norm for quite some time, we’re starting to see a shift among Americans who realize aging is living.”

The Top Four Benefits of Aging:

–Learning new things about themselves or the world every year

–Having more life experience

–Gaining wisdom

–Being more confident

What, then, is the secret to living well in your advancing years? 80% will tell you that a better attitude leads to more graceful aging. 70% said they’re embracing their age, believing that getting older is not as bad as they thought it would be.

The Glamour magazine YouTube channel has 4.43 million subscribers. It covers a wide variety of lifestyle topics. The one entitled "70 Men Ages 5 to 75: What's Your Greatest Fear?" has over 84,000 views.

Here are there top 8 fears, listed in ascending order of times mentioned:

8. End of the world due to climate change

7. Clowns

6. Heights

5. Evil people causing me harm

4. Being alone/Dying alone

3. Spiders/Snakes

2. Death of loved one

1. Failing to live up to my potential (most often mentioned)

You can watch the video here.

“Don’t worry, be happy,” is more than just a song lyric. A growing body of evidence supports an association between optimism and healthy aging. A new study has found that being more optimistic appears to promote emotional well-being.

Studies have increasingly supported the idea of optimism as a resource that may promote good health and longevity. An 11-year study measured the optimism and pessimism of 2,267 men and women over 52 as they aged and found that those who died from coronary heart disease were more pessimistic than average. A Harvard study looking at nearly 7,000 older adults counted the most optimistic people as having a 73% reduced risk of heart failure over the follow-up period.

One researcher said, “Stress is known to have a negative impact on our health. So, by looking at whether optimistic people handle day-to-day stressors differently, our findings add to how optimism may promote good health.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God tells us that we will have negative, sometimes devastating, experiences in life (John 16:33). However, Scripture also promises that nothing can separate us from the love of God (Rom. 8:38), that trouble is not random but refines us spiritually (2 Cor. 7:10; 1 Pet. 1:7), and that the peace of God can guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:4).

Google has published its most searched-for terms of 2021:

For the UK, the five most frequently asked “When” questions were:

1. When will lockdown end?

2. When will I get the vaccine?

3. When does Love Island finish?

4. When does lockdown start?

5. When does Love Island start?

For the US, the five most frequently asked “How to Be” questions were:

1) How to be eligible for stimulus check

2) How to be more attractive

3) How to be happy alone

4) How to be a baddie

5) How to be a good boyfriend

Possible Preaching Angle:

“Therefore, since you have been raised with Christ, strive for the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Col. 3:1-2).

On August 11, 2017, the world's oldest man passed away, just a month short of his 114th birthday—making him one of the 10 longest lived men since modern record keeping began. If you knew nothing else about him than this, you might expect to discover that he had led a peaceful life, free of fear, grief, and danger.

The truth is the opposite. The man in question was Yisrael Krystal, a Holocaust survivor. Born in Poland in 1903, he survived for years in the Lodz Ghetto, and was then transported to Auschwitz. In this ghetto, his two children died. In Auschwitz, his wife was killed. When Auschwitz was liberated, he was a walking skeleton weighing a mere 82 pounds. He was the only member of his family to survive.

He was raised as a religious Jew and stayed so all his life. When the war was over, with his entire world destroyed, he married again, this time to another holocaust survivor. They had children. They moved to Israel and centered in Haifa, there he began again, setting up in the confectionary business, as he had done in Poland before the war. He made sweets and chocolate. He became an innovator. If you have ever had Israeli orange peel covered in chocolate, liqueur chocolates shaped like little bottles, and covered with silver foil, you are enjoying one of the products he originated. Those who knew him said he was a man with no bitterness in his soul. He wanted people to taste sweetness.

The Good Place is a popular comedy TV show that follows four humans and their experience in an imagined afterlife. People accumulate points based on their good and bad actions on earth and then they’re sent to either “the good place” (heaven) or “the bad place” (hell).

But the characters soon realize that there is a problem in heaven—everything is wonderful, but no one seems happy. One of the Good Place’s residents says, “You get here, and you realize that anything is possible, and you do everything and then you’re done. But you still have infinity left. This place kills fun, and passion, and excitement and love.”

In the show’s final season, to counter the boredom of an eternal existence, the characters decide that the best solution is to give people an escape. The main character explains:

When you feel happy, and satisfied and complete and you want to leave the Good Place for good, you can just walk through [a door leading out of heaven] and your time in the universe will end. You don’t have to go through it if you don’t want to, but you can. And hopefully knowing that you don’t have to be here forever will help you feel happier while you are.

When one of the residents of the Good Place asks what will happen when they pass through this door, the main character says he’s not sure: “All we know is it will be peaceful, and your journey will be over.” They encourage them to have the time of their lives, and then, “when you’re ready, walk through one last door and be at peace.” The show’s argument, then, is that when heaven becomes unbearable, people should have the choice to end their time there on their own terms and in a peaceful manner.

Author David Wells asks:

What is worldliness? (It is) that system of values, in any given age, which has at its center our fallen human perspective, which displaces God and his truth from the world, and which makes sin look normal and righteousness seem strange. It thus gives great plausibility to what is morally wrong and, for that reason, makes what is wrong seem normal.

Author Kate Bowler, associate professor at Duke Divinity School, has fresh insights on the “Gospel of Hustle” that has pervaded American culture for decades. She laments popular, accepted axioms like “everything is possible if you will only believe” and "everything you need is already inside of you”.

She says, “American culture has popular theories about how to build a perfect life. You can have it all if you just learn how to conquer your limits. There is infinity lurking somewhere at the bottom of your inbox or in the stack of self-help books on the bedside table.”

At age 35, Bowler was diagnosed with incurable stage IV colon cancer, which caused her to rethink ideas about hustle culture--doing more, pushing more to achieve success. She wonders what “enoughness” feels like. She has been able to manage her cancer with immunotherapy and has a new perspective:

We are believers in the gospel of hustle, the gospel of efficiency and the gospel of time management. We are convinced that we need to just discipline ourselves into better routines. But the whole idea of a formula breaks down when it can't solve the problem of being a person. It doesn't solve the problem of pain. For example, the gospel of hustle, the more I worked, the more work I got. Even success looks like failure, and I was just trying to get to the end of the mythical workday.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is exactly why Solomon mourned the futility of life in Ecclesiastes. The ultimate answer to life is not found in working harder, but in what Jesus said, “Come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).

Singer-songwriter Sandra McCracken shares insight of how an early morning flight changed her perspective on her problems:

One morning I boarded an early flight to Florida for a music gig. My mind scrolled through the usual anxieties, like old tapes on repeat. From a west-facing window I found myself ruminating over some troubling circumstances that were pending resolution.

It was dark as we ascended through heavy clouds. Most of the window shades were closed in the cabin. A little time passed, then someone on the left side of the plane opened their shade across the aisle from me. The morning sun shot a blaze of pink light across my face. The sunlight lifted my spirits.

I looked back to see the view out the west-side window. It remained predominately dark. I had been so wrapped up in my tiny scope of vision that I hadn’t realized the sun had crept over the horizon. While one side of the aircraft was glowing with light, the other was still in the shadows. Perspective has a way of shifting our experience.

On any given day, I could make a list of my anxieties, but the morning light shining on the east side of that airplane reminds me that I could just as easily make a list of the good gifts that God has given me. Sometimes I choose to look out the dark side of the plane, into the shadows, and I focus on what is broken or needs repair. This is essential to know and consider the reality of our world. But I can get stuck there.

But no matter which window I looked out, all the while I was strapped safely in the window seat of that airplane. And all the while the pilot continued to steer the plane toward our destination. In spite of our shifting perspectives, we have a destination. God has gone before us to lay out a good plan for our lives (Jer. 29:11, Isa. 30:21). Even as we keep ourselves on the trajectory that God has purposed for us, he holds us and guides us along the way.

Only 44 people have reached the summit of all 14 of the world’s 26,000-foot peaks, according to the record books. Or, maybe no one has. The difference rides on a timeless question getting a fresh look--what is a summit?

Ed Viesturs believes he knows. He is one of the 44, the only American on the list. In 1993, climbing alone and without supplemental oxygen or ropes, he reached the “central summit” of Shishapangma, the world’s 14th-highest mountain. Most climbers turn around there, calling it good enough.

Before him was a narrow spine of about 300 feet, a knife-edge of snow with drops to oblivion on both sides. At its end was the mountain’s true summit, a few feet higher in elevation than where he stood. “Too dangerous,” Ed told himself. He retreated but then he said, “I was one of those guys where if the last nail in the deck hasn’t been hammered in, it’s not done.” Eight years later, Ed climbed within reach of Shishapangma’s summit again. With a leg on each side of the narrow mountain spine, he shimmied across it. He touched the highest point and scooted back to relative safety.

There is a summit, and then there is everything below it. Can close ever be good enough? By asking a simple-sounding question—What is the summit?—the researchers are raising doubts about past accomplishments and raising standards for future ones.

Eberhard Jurgalski has spent 40 years chronicling the ascents of the 26,000-foot peaks. And now he has some jarring news: It is possible that no one has ever been on the true summit of all 14 of those peaks. Some stopped on the central summit, not daring to straddle the ridge the way Viesturs did. Some turned around at a popular selfie-taking spot without scaling the precarious ridge hidden just beyond it.

Climber and author David Roberts says, “The summit does matter. Why does it matter? Because it’s the whole point of mountaineering. It’s the goal that defines an ascent.”

Australian explorer Damien Gildea said, “People are stopping short because it’s too hard. And I say, that’s not really a good excuse for a climber.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Let’s also beware the danger of giving up before reaching the finish line of the Christian life. Thinking that “close enough” is “good enough” leaves us short of the prize (Phil. 3:14).

“The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it.” — Simone Weil, philosopher