“I’d love to have guests and present a whole smorgasbord of ways for the children to choose,” he’d say later, recounting his early idea for a show. “Some child might choose painting; some child might choose playing the cello. There are so many ways of saying who we are and how we feel. Ways that don’t hurt anybody. And it seems to me that this is a

Each year, Nancy began Christmas shopping in June, buying around 1,500 gifts that she picked out—or knitted—herself. Her husband had his own methods of radical generosity. When he died, his personal ledger book held the records of thousands of loans he’d quietly given to employees with apparently no effort at collection.

began a lifelong search for what is essential, what it is about my neighbor that doesn’t meet the eye.”9 With this new perspective,

What if his career and calling weren’t opposite trajectories after all? What if he was called not to choose but to combine? To carry the work of ministry onto a television set? To serve a congregation of young children behind puppets rather than pulpits?

I think God knew that we humans need flesh-and-bone, three-dimensional models to understand what it looks like practically to glorify him.

You’re not a pastor, missionary, or religious professional. You’re a mere Christian like me (Jordan) who works as an entrepreneur, teacher, or mechanic. And you deeply want to glorify God in every aspect of your life—including your work.

pouring your life out in service of others can offer glimpses of heaven on earth.

Each child watching would feel as if Mister Rogers was talking only to them. But across more than nine hundred episodes, Fred was connecting with millions of children. In the mid-1980s, when the show was at its peak, nearly 10 percent of American households tuned in on a regular basis.

“We charge you to shake us through a God who involves Himself in our world, into the world where He already is…This world of TV cameras, of puppets, of children, of parents, of studios, of directors, of actors, this [too] is God’s world…We, as the Church, charge that you speak to us to disturb us…We charge you to speak to us to remind us that we