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A magical Christmas, a magical evening, magical touch, magical love – people talk about magic when they experience special emotions that they cannot or would rather not explain. "Bring a little magic into your life". This is a saying that resonates extremely well with the expectations of an entire generation.

I am visiting two sick people who share the same terminal illness. Their suffering is increased by the fact that they are brothers and that a mother’s broken heart lies at the core of it all. One of them is a businessman. The other, a servant of the altar. Their mother’s greatest frustration is that her wish to take some of the suffering...

The year 1685 gave the world two of its greatest composers: Johann Sebastian Bach and George Friedrich Handel. The presence of the great biblical subjects in their masterpieces not only filled the hearts of believers with joy, but determined a new direction in the evolution of the musical language, which continues to have an impact to this day.

Rediscovering the blessing that resides in the little things of life has been one of the challenges of every season I've lived through. This is the conclusion I always come to when I take a moment to reflect.

Is it possible, as single parents, to instil in our children a love for God and for the church?

God gave Christians a message to spread. The whole Bible talks about creation, about the fall of the world into sin, but also about the existence of a Saviour, in the person of Jesus Christ.

One of the surprises of the twentieth century when it comes to religious freedom was Dignitatis Humanae Persona, the first declaration of religious freedom officially promulgated by the Roman Catholic Church in 1965, at the end of the Second Vatican Council.

Some time ago, an older friend, now a parent, was telling me how the way his father treated him in childhood caused him unnecessary suffering. Now, as an adult struggling with anxiety, he has spent much time in a psychologist’s office.

We often associate divorce with the unhappiness of adults who reprehensibly decide to go their separate ways. For under-age brides Noora and Nujood, however, divorce was their escape from a nightmare of domestic violence and abuse, into which they were thrown at a young age by their own families.

If the death of our parents is a blow which makes “the very fabric of life…buckle and cave in,” the ageing of our parents resembles a classroom where we learn to give more than we are used to receiving.

“I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite" (Isaiah 57:15).

A smooth sea never gave a skilled sailor, said Franklin D. Roosevelt, suggesting that without hardship, challenges and even failures, we cannot become our best selves.

Earthquakes have always struck fear into the hearts of people who didn't know why the earth was shaking but who saw how easily their possessions or loved ones could be lost to such tremors.

I feel like every time I’ve tuned into the news lately, I’ve heard a story about a woman dying from intimate partner or domestic violence (DV). It is heartbreaking and sickening. 

Dr Carlton Byrd is the director and main speaker of Breath of Life, a television broadcast dedicated to the urban colored population in the U.S. and the Pastor of the Oakwood University Church.