Analysis

My husband and I realised that the inevitable had happened; rumours of a war in Ukraine had intensified in the previous month.

Joaquín Carmona had 16,000 followers on Twitter, and his posts about Spanish athletics were appreciated even by sport professionals. None of his followers had ever met him in person, and when silence fell on his account for three months, people began to look for him, write to him and ask who Carmona really was.

Martin Luther believed that he knew exactly what God expected of him, and in the tireless endeavour to please God, he came to the point of hating Him.

Every day, we are surrounded by the resilience of developing characters and it’s almost impossible not to be touched by their beauty and fragility.

"I was wrong. I'm sorry"—these words can have a magical effect on a struggling relationship. But if we fail to show empathy, the apology will sound fake or hurt the offended person even more.

I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. – John 14:6

As Christians we are interested in a perpetual spiritual, moral, general human perfecting. But can we really succeed without perfecting our way of thinking, our capacity to understand, and thus without increasing our intellectual capital?

Even the most rigorously researched statistics are not immune from misinterpretation, and they can often be used in a way that obscures the truth.

In our Christian experience, we strive for perfection, but we honestly admit we are a universe away from it. Our inability to live up to God’s standards can lead us to feel we can no longer benefit from divine forgiveness, at least not until we prove strong enough not to give into the sins we are battling.

Jason Padgett was exactly as one would expect someone who has no interest in school to be. He was only interested in parties and bars and was a magnet for both fun and trouble. That’s how he ended up being expelled, which didn’t affect him too much. However, getting beaten savagely changed his life forever, in the most unimaginable way possible.

I thought to myself: Is there an alarm or is it an end of day signal?

Traditional communities are like rivers, while modern societies are like oceans, said Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Consider that a river—deeper or shallower, faster or slower—always has a direction, as traditional societies usually direct the lives of their members. The ocean is a different story.

It is not something that is written in any rules or printed on posters. However, you can see it in the way people greet each other and share their ideas, as well as in the sense of belonging they experience when they participate in church activities. The organisational culture of the church can be a source of unity, or conversely an invisible obstacle...

Roads turned into raging rivers. Downed power lines. Fallen trees. Homes left in ruins. Those who have experienced the fury of a hurricane will be familiar with these scenes, yet they will still feel uneasy when they see them. This is not only because they are signs of a devastating storm, but also because they seem to show a world that is changing...

I have always liked to participate in public worship and to practice some of the spiritual disciplines. I did not experience a stormy conversion. God revealed himself to me, instead, like “a gentle whisper” (1 Kings 19:12).