How authentic is my life?

When one pays attention to the finer details, any life story can be interesting. When you go into detail, any common or mediocre story that could have been summed up in only a few words, becomes a confession. I realise that my own story is no exception, although it has often seemed to me that I live a banal and predictable life.

A short guide to the socialisation of children

Even after the World Health Organization replaced the term social distancing with physical distancing, people are still feeling the effects of social distancing.

The Ten Commandments

The book of Exodus is the second book in the Bible. It follows God’s servant Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery and through the desert towards the hoped-for Promised Land. Along the way, they stop at Mt Sinai. Moses goes up the mountain and receives from God ten commandments carved on a stone tablet. This is one of the most famous sections...

Generation ”couch potatoes”

What you're doing, right now, at this very moment, is killing you. More than cars or the Internet or even that little mobile device we keep talking about, the technology you're using the most almost every day is this: your tush. Nowadays people are sitting 9.3 hours a day, which is more than we're sleeping, at 7.7 hours. Sitting is so incredibly prevalent,...

How much do the origins of our errors in judgement matter?

An article in the New Yorker[1] explains why we tend to not change our convictions, not even when faced with contrary evidence. 

Called to attention

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...
life

The road forwards that actually goes backwards

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...
2021 year in review

2022: A new dawn?

When the ball dropped in New York’s Times Square on December 31, 2020, the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. The chapter had closed on what TIME magazine declared on its December 14 cover to be “The worst year ever”. 2021 was supposed to be a bright light at the end of the tunnel—potential treatments like the Astrazeneca vaccine promised to fight the Covid virus, the...

The rescue at the end of the railway track

The days that we don’t see the suffering of others are few. We have learned to let our feelings of helplessness wipe our conscience and we move on, forgetting that we are not required to heal the suffering of all mankind, but to do the best we can, every day, with what we have available to us. In the case of Norma Romero...

John Calvin

In The Legacy of John Calvin, David W. Hall divides leaders into two categories. Some predict the future, and others change it. Calvin, Hall said, is in the second category.

Antipapism: realism or paranoia? (I)

In late 2015, famed neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who was running for the Republican presidential nomination, became the target of scrutiny and innuendo from some in the media, who used the moment to turn his religious identity on its head. Ben Carson is a Seventh-day Adventist, and people wanted to know how Adventism influences his thinking. Carson lost the election race, but won a...

The meaning of life in moments of uncertainty

We are leaving. Even if we were not supposed to, we chose to and it is happening. We are moving again. It is the eighth time in eleven years of marriage.

What did Jesus think about Himself?

Jesus Christ is certainly the most fascinating and controversial person in human history, if we look at how He has been understood throughout the history of Christian thought. But how did Jesus understand Himself?

Created with a need for rest

Work has been part of God's plan for mankind since creation, but so has rest. Setting wise boundaries between work and rest is not only a successful strategy for maintaining our productivity, it also reflects on the health of our relationship with God and our fellow people.

Difficult conversations | How do we talk about death with our children?

Talking to your children about death can be an act of love. You can't take away their pain with a simple conversation, but you can give them something just as important: truth wrapped in gentleness, the reassurance and relief that they are not alone in their grief, and even the hope that sees beyond the loss.