Analysis

What if there was no good news to give us confidence that we could get through the troubles facing us now? What if there was no good news to assure us that we are cherished, loved and supported, that we are not alone?

“I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me” (Habakkuk 2:1).

In 1867, when Edson White was 18 years old and working at the Adventist type-room in Battle Creek, Michigan, he had a transformative conversation with Mr Bell.

"Most of us now living have a chance for personal, physical immortality." This is the sentence French biologist and philosopher Jean Rostand (son of the writer Edmond de Rostand) used to begin the preface of a book on cryonics, The Prospect of Immortality, by the physics professor and science fiction writer Robert C. W. Ettinger.

For many people, the New Year is the catalyst for making changes they didn't have time or energy for in the previous year. On 1 January, the list of resolutions grows promisingly long, but keeping them can become a real ordeal in the tangle of daily problems and deadlines. Statistics show that even before the month of snowdrops, many of the commitments made...

In recent weeks, Afghanistan has become a tender spot for the whole world. The Taliban's new and newly offensive rise to power is a novel situation for the international community, and every international player wants to know how to position itself in this new pattern of dynamic, bewildering forces.

Looking back, I realize how the ferocious world beneath the heavens is tamed, at crucial moments, through communication on that biblical Ladder of Jacob.

Sometimes, I wonder what I would be like if I were more like Jesus. Above all, I wonder how He would act in my situation. I have to admit that these questions sometimes leave me feeling lost.

The readers who immerse themselves in the maze of paper and ink, savouring every word, seem to be on the verge of extinction.

Rudyard Kipling referred to ants in his famous poem, recommending these fragile creatures as a kind of didactic exhibit. What can one learn from ant colonies?

After more than a decade of civil war, during which more than 300,000 civilians have died, Syria is hit by a new crisis. People are digging graves again, for the adults and children who managed to survive the war.

Regardless of what is said about the predictive nature of the words traditionally attributed to Malraux—"The 21st century will be religious or it will not be"—the truth is that almost two decades of this century have passed, and we don't really know where we are going.

Education is essential for the survival of any social group, since a community ensures its existence and development only by passing on to the next generation the knowledge it has accumulated, the power it derives from it and its ideological aspirations.

How do we recognise violations of dignity and their impact on daily life?

Cynicism might feel smarter and more realistic—but the evidence simply doesn’t back it.