Analysis

It is convenient, but also superficial, to say that all religions lead to God. However, this attitude is pervasive, and usually lasts only until one has had a chance to see the difference the various religions make in people's lives.

Between Gladys Aylward’s dream and its fulfilment lay an insurmountable chasm. She crossed it for the sake of people with no future, looking only to the One who promised them one.

Almost a century ago, writer Virginia Woolf noticed people’s tendency to approach books “with clouded and divided minds, asking fiction to be true, poetry to be false, biographies to be flattering and history to chime with prejudices.”

We think we know what a good life is, but what is a "good death", if it exists? When incurable diseases ravage the body and death becomes an imminent reality, the question takes on painful outlines, especially in a society open to arranging the circumstances of death according to the will of its protagonist.

Meetings with people and books have shaped the space for a sometimes unequal, sometimes unsatisfactory growth between the human I am and the one I would like to be.

Nothing can prepare us in advance for the suffering we will experience in this life. But even knowing this, we often remember with guilt the moments of blissful ignorance we had before suffering hit us.

What do you imagine heaven will be like? American science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov famously said, “For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.” Although I love Jesus, I think I am a bit afraid of getting bored there too. There’s a prevailing picture of heaven as being some sort of suspended animation, which may play into this.

“To be fearless may be a gift. However, the most precious one is, probably, the courage resulting from developing the habit of not allowing fear to dictate your actions”, says the renowned Nobel Peace Prize winner and democracy activist in Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, in her essay titled “Free from fear”.

At the age of 34, Joseph already has his own business, into which he has invested much of his soul and talent. He is a carpenter, and the personality of the pieces he carves, chisels, polishes, and paints with his hands stands out beautifully. With each order he sends to a customer, Joseph takes some time to send a handwritten thank-you note. On...

"The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts." (C. S. Lewis)

In two editions of our show, we talked to Johnnathan Ward about his long career as a chaplain. Given his many years as a military chaplain, we touched on difficult topics such as: Does the presence of a Christian chaplain in the military mean that God approves of military operations? How does a military chaplain serve in a conflict situation?

Elspeth Muir’s brother, Alexander, died from drowning. It was 2009, and he had just turned 21. He died from drowning, but his death “was not foreshadowed by his love of water except that it explains why he was near a river, alone, with a blood-alcohol content of almost 0.25. My brother died because he was drunk, and because the drink made him stupid.”

The effect or influence that a particular thing has on us depends largely on where that thing falls on the scale of our values. It's one thing to lose your folding fan in a foreign country and quite another to lose your passport.

An ordinary wooden chair is a metaphor that’s often used to talk about the key dynamics of faith. But it’s worth exploring further. Perhaps we could describe this as a process of developing the theory of a chair.

With God's help, little guys can do big things too...