Analysis

After a chance meeting of mutual friends, I was introduced to Tim and Sonia in a restaurant in central Toowoomba, Queensland, eight days before their home was washed away.

To believe is not to close one's eyes to questions or to abandon reason in favour of illusory spiritual comfort.

Crouched in the trenches of the horror of old age, modern individuals no longer wish to recover anything from the natural ageing process that their ancestors practised with such serenity. On the contrary, the first signs of physical decline become the raw material for a wide range of efforts (from picturesque to sickly) to forge a youth that the mirror refuses to restore.

Living one day according to God's plan is a good idea to start with. But learning to live in such a way every day is something else.

“‘The days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign Lord, ‘when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it’” (Amos...

Measuring more than nine metres tall, the pale granite carving of Dr King that is the centrepiece of the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial, just to the east of the National Mall in downtown Washington DC, makes it easy to forget that he was a relatively short man. His iconic likeness towers over visitors as his words carved into the stone walls around...

The prevailing message in the context of the pandemic was clear, but also disturbing: "Don't go out! Stay home! Work from home!" But what about those who do not have a home?

I talked to Pastor Nicu Butoi about the role that religion could play in treating depression and hopelessness, at the end of a series of evangelistic presentations he gave to a full-house before the pandemic.

In its first two decades, the 21st century has already received several titles: the century of speed, the era of information, or the digital era. In a constantly connected world, does authentic disconnection still exist?

When I watch chicks hatch in a nest and begin to perform the instinctive behaviours of their species, I think about what we might understand about ourselves, the human species, if we had the perspective of such a privileged observer.

In a cynical world, just as certain otherwise healthy nutrients could cause cancer, correct formulations develop cynicism because they are easily suspected of hypocrisy. In order to believe again, cynics need different, experiential perspectives.

We love stories, and Hollywood knows how to dramatise them. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that Hollywood is first and foremost an industry driven by ratings and profits. Children are more vulnerable and more likely than adults to pick up identity models from the film world.

Problem gambling in Australia and New Zealand is an issue seldom talked about, but we ignore it at our peril.

When life takes a bad turn, we are often tempted to console ourselves with nostalgia. We begin to look at the past in a different light. We realise that we had been too demanding of ourselves, of others, of the world. That even though we had everything we needed we still wanted more. That we were always looking for something else, without paying...

A lot is said and written about food, and a fair share of the promises we make are related to it. We might decide to eat more healthfully or perhaps we wish to diminish food waste. Unfortunately, our promises are often quickly forgotten, because destructive habits are hard to forsake. There are, however, people who have found ways to transform not just their...