I’m Not Alright My personal battle with myself, depression, and my realization that I was not ready.   Time for a New Strategy Posted: July 30, 2011 in Health, Spiritual, Uncategorized Tags: depression, inspiration   This afternoon I was putting away dishes. As I was placing the silverware...

Ling Ling works at the largest condom factory in the world. About six months ago I moved to one of those boom cities on the shores of southern China. Naturally, she was a bit embarrassed to tell me but after a few weeks of her saying she worked at some packaging factory, she laid it on me. I was shocked....

The following is a short story inspired by a “Advertising Icon” costume party I attended recently. Enjoy… She was lonely, this maiden who spent all her days holding a basket of grapes in the red world, guarding the Raisins. Her long flowing hair was the color of darkest night, her...

“Paper or plastic?” The question barely registers. I look down at my nuts in a vice grip, and then back up at the pimply teen. “Plastic.” I pay and wait for the last few bags to be loaded into the cart. My balls are killing me. “Would you like help with that sir?” God...

Life was not fair. Period. She knew it. She accepted it. Nevertheless, what was happening in her life was something she did not plan for. She was stressed out. Her life had turned into a circus. Juggling between work and household chores, she felt herself being reduced to smithereens. The cleaning, dusting,...

“Welcome to our mid-week service,” the tiny old man in front of the pulpit spoke. The handful of people in the pews smiled back their greetings. Even Regina lifted her head, panted, then settled back down on the floor next to the old woman, Annie Williams, known to most of the congregation as Aunt...

[Editor's Note: This week, we are going to be running excerpts from David Zimmerman's new work, The Parable of the Unexpected Guest. You can read Part One here. David is an editor at IVP Books and a columnist here at the Writers Collective. Follow ongoing adventures with the unexpected guest on Twitter...

[Editor's Note: Over the next three days, we are going to be running excerpts from David Zimmerman's new work, The Parable of the Unexpected Guest. David is an editor at IVP Books and a columnist here at the Writers Collective. Follow ongoing adventures with the unexpected guest on Twitter at @unexpguest.] Part...

Frances peered skeptically over the ledge. “Are you sure the instructions Lennart gave us were right?” she asked her brother, Emil.  “Why would we need to do something so risky?  Why would he ask us to do that?” “You know exactly what the compass said,” Emil replied.  “It said that we...

None of us knew what had caused the war–the explosions, the devastation, all of it. It happened too fast, and for whatever reason all of us who survived had been too busy to stay informed enough to venture a guess, educated or not, as to the cause. We knew it was over and besides our group there...