Analysis

“All I can do is pray and hope.” With those words, I ended an article on infertility. After years of marriage and not one pregnancy, I did one of the only things I could do to help me process the fact that my wife and I might never have children: I wrote about it. 

"Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings… And overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice." (Nelson Mandela)[1]

Why couldn’t God simply have forgiven sinners? Precisely because sinners cannot be forgiven until they completely understand sin, with all its far reaching consequences, or before the wages of sin are paid.

Trust in God gives clarity to our thinking, so God asks us not to be obsessed with justice, but to be concerned with and delighted by grace.

Some houses allow you to read the owners' story on their walls and through their windows. Although it happens less and less often, the most beautiful houses are built by those who mean to live in them. Cara Brookins and her children know very well how every beam or window in their house was put up, because they built it together.

Paris, November 13, 2015. A European capital is struck cruelly by fundamentalists who justify their crimes in the name of something sacred—an event that shocked the entire world. It was neither the first nor, unfortunately, the last tragedy whose impact on the public has become a subject of analysis.

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day. – Emily Dickinson

Five hundred years ago, Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. How are the motives that led to the Reformation viewed today?

Christianity has never missed an opportunity to engage with major communication technologies. In fact, it has always found ways to transform them into vehicles for its mission. However, this adaptation has always come at a price. Today, in the midst of the artificial intelligence revolution, what will the Christian mission gain and lose?

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...

A common source of jokes and stories with subtext, the relationship between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law appears to be characterised by particular sensitivities.

"If I cut off your arm, will your husband take you again?" "My husband loves me very much." So he started cutting. "There was no alternative."

Many had not yet finished clearing away the leftovers from the New Year's Eve table, almost no one had returned to work, politics was still numb and journalists yawned with boredom because almost nothing of interest had happened on 2 January 2015.

Faith has brought me not only a sense of God's presence, but also evidence that He is answering our requests. Therefore, the other reasons that made me believe have become stronger.

In 2013, famous atheist author Richard Dawkins was voted the world's leading thinker in a global poll of 10,000 people in 100 countries. Not a single thinker from the fields of religion or ethics made the list. It's worth saying again: "Think forward!"