Episodes

On August 23, two very different worlds confronted lies they had learned to live with. Increase Mather, a complicated voice in the aftermath of the Salem witch trials, challenged the dangerous use of spectral evidence. Decades later, the fires of rebellion spread across Saint-Domingue as enslaved people rose against a system built on the lie that one human being could own another. In this episode of Moments Almanac, we explore Salem, the beginning of the Haitian Revolution, and a sobering quest...

By the summer of 1741, George Frideric Handel had every reason to believe his best work was behind him. His operas were struggling, his finances were uncertain, his health had failed him before, and at fifty-six years old, the great composer seemed to be watching his celebrated career fade. Then Charles Jennens handed him a remarkable collection of Scripture tracing the story of Christ—from prophecy and incarnation to suffering, resurrection, and eternal reign. Handel sat down to compose. Twe...

For years, I thought the world would run a lot better if somebody would just put me in charge. Turns out, I can barely manage my own Tuesday. 😄 In this episode of Scattered Moments, I take a lighthearted look at what happens when I try to take charge of my time, gifts, money, emotions, story, and legacy—and what changes when I finally hand the keys back to Jesus. Maybe surrender isn't losing control. Maybe it's finally admitting we never had as much control as we thought. Thank God I'm not i...

Verse 1 I dwell within Your shelter I lean upon Your grace While others run to falsehood I choose to seek Your face Chorus You are my portion My cup My counsel My rock You are my teacher By my side My inheritance My guide Verse 2 The lines have fallen gently In places You have planned My future is not hidden It's resting in Your hands And even in the nighttime When troubled thoughts arise Your whisper is my counsel Your presence is my light Chorus You are my portion My cup My counsel My rock ...

On August 21, 1911, the Mona Lisa disappeared from the Louvre—and for hours, no one noticed. Forty-five years earlier, on that same date, hymn writer Civilla D. Martin was born. She would eventually give the church one of its most enduring reminders that while human eyes overlook much, God never does. In this episode of Moments Almanac, we follow the remarkable theft that helped turn the Mona Lisa into a worldwide icon and the story behind Martin’s beloved hymn, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” Jes...

What if God answered your prayers today by giving you nothing but Himself? Would He be enough? Psalm 16 is a song of quiet confidence from David. Trouble seems to be somewhere in the background—he begins by praying, “Protect me, God, for I take refuge in you”—but David spends surprisingly little time describing what threatens him. Instead, he turns his attention toward what he possesses. And his greatest possession is God Himself. “LORD, you are my portion and my cup of blessing; you hold my ...

On August 20, 1912, William Booth—the nearly blind, aging founder of the Salvation Army—died after a lifetime spent carrying the gospel into places respectable society preferred to ignore. His message was simple and relentless: as long as people suffered, “I’ll fight.” Exactly sixty-five years later, on August 20, 1977, Voyager 2 launched from Cape Canaveral carrying another kind of message: the Golden Record, filled with music, greetings, human sounds, and echoes of life on Earth. It was sent t...

Sometimes it’s a job. Sometimes it’s a ministry, a dream, a responsibility, or simply something we once felt certain God wanted us to do. Discouragement has a way of making an exit look like the only reasonable option. In this episode of Scattered Moments, we begin with the unlikely story of an aging Kentucky restaurant owner whose business disappeared when the highway moved—and who discovered that what looked like the end of the road was actually the beginning of something new. Then we consid...

Two brilliant minds, separated by an ocean and 129 years, share the same date in history. On August 19, 1662, mathematician and inventor Blaise Pascal died at just thirty-nine years old. Hidden inside his coat was a small parchment recording the night when the great thinker encountered something reason alone could not explain: the living God. Then, on August 19, 1791, Benjamin Banneker — a free Black astronomer and mathematician — wrote Thomas Jefferson a remarkable letter. Armed with Scriptu...

Who can dwell in the presence of a holy God? Psalm 15 begins with one of Scripture’s most searching questions: “LORD, who can dwell in your tent? Who can live on your holy mountain?” — Psalm 15:1David answers with a portrait of integrity: a person who practices righteousness, speaks truth from the heart, refuses to use words to harm others, keeps promises even when they hurt, protects the vulnerable, and lives justly. This short psalm reads almost like a collection of proverbs, but beneath it...

The Holy Place Inspired by Psalm 15, The Holy Place begins with the question at the heart of David’s psalm: “LORD, who can dwell in your tent? Who can live on your holy mountain?” Psalm 15 describes a life of integrity, truth, compassion, justice, and faithfulness. Yet its opening question also points us toward our need for grace. How can imperfect people approach a holy God? For the Christian, the answer is found in Jesus Christ. We do not enter God's presence because we have achieved holine...

Two searches. Sixteen centuries apart. One remarkable date. On August 18, we remember two women whose influence reached far beyond what anyone might have expected. Helena of Constantinople, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, spent her final years in the Holy Land, where Christian tradition credits her with a search that uncovered the True Cross beneath the streets of Jerusalem. Then, sixteen centuries later, Tennessee became the final state needed to secure ratification of the 19th Amen...

Why do I keep climbing the stairs to my home office around 8:00 at night, turning on a microphone, and spending the next 45 minutes making a podcast? Somewhere along the way, Scattered Moments became more than a hobby. It became a spiritual discipline. In this episode, I share a little about why I keep showing up—and, more importantly, who I’m showing up for. This podcast is for the preachers and the pushers. The successes and the failures. The honor students and the underachievers. The holy an...

On August 17, two very different claims were staked. One was driven into the gravel of a Yukon creek, where the discovery of gold would ignite the Klondike Gold Rush and send nearly 100,000 fortune-seekers north. The other was staked decades earlier in the life of William Carey, a poor English cobbler who became one of the great pioneers of the modern missionary movement. Carey spent forty-one years in India translating Scripture, establishing schools, training leaders, and carrying the gospe...

“Still My Refuge” is a song of quiet faith shaped by the language and longing of Psalm 14. In a world that often feels cold, distant, and spiritually empty, this song holds on to one steady truth: the Lord is still our refuge. Drawing from the psalm’s sobering picture of humanity’s wandering—“all have turned away”—the song gives voice to those moments when loneliness, heartache, and conflict make us feel abandoned. Yet it also echoes the deeper assurance of Psalm 14, that God has not turned awa...

On August 16, two lives separated by eighty years tell a larger story about what happens when the gospel refuses to stay safely inside the walls of a church. In 1795, Absalom Jones was ordained a deacon in Philadelphia after once being forced from his knees and told where a Black worshipper was permitted to pray. Eighty years later, on August 16, 1875, revivalist Charles Grandison Finney died at Oberlin after a lifetime of preaching conversion and condemning slavery as a national sin. Two prea...

Psalm 14 begins with one of Scripture’s most familiar lines: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” But David is describing more than intellectual unbelief. The “fool” is the person who lives as though God is absent—as though there is no divine authority, no final accountability, and no holy presence watching over the world. From there, the psalm widens its focus. The Lord looks down from heaven searching for those who understand and seek Him, only to find that “all have turned away.”...

On August 15, 1962, Martin Luther King Jr. walked through the smoking ruins of Shady Grove Baptist Church in Lee County, Georgia. The church had been burned after opening its doors to voter registration efforts—a reminder that for Black Americans in the segregated South, the simple act of seeking a ballot could come at a terrible cost. Fifteen years earlier, on that same date, India and Pakistan emerged from British rule as independent nations after generations of struggle for self-government. ...

There are moments when every instinct tells us to run—when the future feels uncertain, the cost of moving forward seems too great, and control slips from our hands. Everyone has a Gethsemane. In this Scattered Moments reflection, recorded more than a decade ago, Matt Tullos explores the kind of courage Jesus demonstrated in the garden: not fearless courage, but courage that trembles, prays, and still takes the next step. Through Gethsemane, Goliath, the belly of the beast—and even a few too ma...

On August 14, 1941, two very different promises were written into history. Off the coast of Newfoundland, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt issued the Atlantic Charter—eight principles describing their hopes for a freer, more peaceful world after the war. That same day, inside Auschwitz, Polish priest Maximilian Kolbe was dying after volunteering to take the place of a condemned husband and father. One declaration was announced to the world. The other was written quietly in flesh and b...

“How long, O Lord?” It is one of the most honest prayers in Scripture—and sometimes one of the hardest prayers to pray. Inspired by Psalm 13, “How Long, O Lord?” is a song for the long night of waiting: the prayer we have prayed a hundred times, the answer that has not yet come, and the silence that makes us wonder whether God is listening. David asks “How long?” four times in the opening verses of Psalm 13. Yet remarkably, the psalm never tells us that David's circumstances changed. Instead,...

Psalm 13 — How Long, O Lord?“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?” — Psalm 13:1 Psalm 13 is only six verses long, but David takes us on an extraordinary journey from lament to prayer to trust. Four times in the opening two verses, David asks the same question: “How long?” The Hebrew expression ʿad-anah (עַד־אָנָה) carries the sense of until when? or how much longer? It is the language of someone who has waited long enough to wonder whether the waiting will ever end. David feels forgott...

On August 13, 1521, an empire fell. On August 13, 1587 — sixty-six years later — one man was named. Today's Moments Almanac holds the fall of Tenochtitlán alongside the baptism of Manteo at Roanoke: two colonial-era encounters, two very different outcomes, and a question about what it means to be seen. Take heart. Notice the scattered moments. Share the grace. Prayer: Lord, in a world that so easily reduces people to numbers, casualties, or footnotes, thank You that You call each of us by name....

Fear has a way of convincing us that we are alone. In this modern psalm, Matt Tullos reflects on a life often marked by fear—and the greater truth he has discovered along the way: through every unknown, every failure, every beginning, and every ending, Jesus has remained faithful. Still is a meditation on the relentless love of Christ, the Friend of sinners who refuses to let go. Against the backdrop of an October landscape—falling leaves, cool winds, birds, clouds, and the fingerprints of th...