Analysis

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

As the rising sun brought life and light to the east coast of North America, it was greeted by a brisk autumn morning. Hurricane Erin was on the move in the Atlantic, creating heavy rainfall from Newfoundland to Bermuda. A cold front saved most of the eastern seaboard from the hurricane’s destruction and the resulting high-pressure front produced clear skies—perfect conditions for air travel.

A few hours after launching from the Kennedy Space Center, somewhere above the equator, astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen saw something that few human eyes have ever beheld directly: the entire Earth, small and luminous, suspended in the absolute darkness of outer space.

Trying to describe a dying church like the one he was called to serve, Pastor Chris Lewis uses the image of a car "turned over, in a ditch, covered by weeds and beer cans, with a rusted out engine, and a couple of bodies in the trunk."

For ten years Luther read the Bible twice a year. His first Bible was so thoroughly read that he "knew what was on every page and where every passage was found." Martin Luther is the most prominent name among those who brought about the Reformation and took Bible study to a new level.

I open the window and breathe in the air, trying to guess the weather. Floating around, mixed, are scents and miasms alike; it's hard to decipher these intricate clues.

Grandpa’s eyes, mother’s wide hips, aunt’s serene gaze, father’s ambition, great-grandmother’s rheumatism—all the little traits that define us seem to come from ancestral parents who, together, should have all the genes that anyone can have today, all the possible ingredients for the recipe from which we were made.

It’s important to grant our kids their independence, but would they know what to do in an uncomfortable, tricky or dangerous situation?

A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones, says a well-known biblical proverb. We don't have to be practicing Christians to recognise its truth.

How did the phrase “time is money” come to steal the true meaning of time? Time is not money, it is life.

The young generations of women raised with the ideal of the family in which the man and the woman are team partners, equal both at home and outside it, discover that their expectations have taken precedence over the real course of society. The most surprised are, unpredictably, women who are highly educated.

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.

I don’t like change.

Psychologists recommend all sorts of things you need to do or have in order to nurture a healthy and strong mind, such as tenacity, ambition or optimism, but there are also some things you should avoid for the same purpose.

Love: the ultimate subject. We love people for who they are. However, there’s a kind of love too lofty to truly encompass all the nuances, a love that manifests itself toward people regardless of who they are or what they have become. Such a love beautifully encapsulates the story of Ian and Larissa.