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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.

For parents, Christmas is always a stressful time: how to satisfy the child's desires without spoiling them and giving them the impression that they deserve to receive whatever they want, just because their decibel level exceeds the parents' level of calm and patience.

On the basis of ancient, hidden non-canonical gospels, some commercial and half-learned scholars propagate sensational discoveries, which are in fact both old and novel speculations arising from the Bible’s silence on some aspects of Jesus’s life.

Contrary to one's initial impression, vigilance is not the main theme of Jesus' parables of "absence and expectation." Absence is central to these stories, because it is absence which enriches them, rather than impoverishing them. Absence is not a shortage, a gap, or a sign of non-existence—it is a catalyst.

The book written by John Ortberg, All the Places to Go... How Will You Know? invites us to reflect on the discerning of God’s will for our lives.

A seemingly endless stream of needy causes compete for our attention and money every day. Our emails, mailboxes and phones are bombarded by charities asking for generous donations to help.

We live in a world in which the news is far more pervasive than the events it reports. An event happens in one place but is almost instantly repeated and echoed in millions more. And while the event might be shocking, tragic or horrifying, a wider and sometimes greater toll is exacted by its reportage, by the slow-motion replays, by the breathless punditry...

It is right for you to look for what you are looking for, but it is not where you are looking for. In the land of death, you seek a happy life: it is not there. How can life be happy somewhere where there is no life? (St. Augustine, Confessions)

An experimenter is like a hunter who, instead of waiting quietly for game, tries to make it rise, by beating up the locality where he assumes it is. – Francis Bacon, 17th-century English philosopher

Mary was an ordinary person, just like us. The Gospel does not suggest that she had any particular merit, yet her obedience played a pivotal role in a story that would change the world.

In the first two articles of this series, we examined the biblical theology of the Sabbath in relation to the divine act of creation, the history and theology of the people of Israel and early Christianity. This third and final article in the series will examine the Sabbath from the perspective of legalism, under which some commentators have placed seventh-day observance.

The word sacrifice is not really a pleasant word. When you hear it, you may think of weird archaic rituals involving blood and animals. You may think of giving up something you love or like to save money or to save your waistline. Sacrifice is not a word we use often, and it’s often used with negative associations. But in a strange twist, the action...

“Mister Watson, come here, I want to see you.” With this message, Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, launched the telephone. The door had opened to distant, personal and instant contact.

There is no monster under the bed—that much is certain. But how do you convince your child of this, when they come to you, for the hundredth time, with the same fear? When you constantly use the same unheeded command, "Stop fooling around and go to sleep!", this is a sign that you need to learn more about your child's anxiety, and how...

In chaos theory, there is something that scientists call the “butterfly effect”—a seemingly insignificant event triggers a series of other events that later acquire significant importance. The butterfly effect has been used outside the realm of science as a metaphor for small things that have a considerable impact. When it comes to kindness, few things could demonstrate the butterfly effect better than the...