Religion

Jessica was 19 when she had to tell her parents, both practicing Christians, that she was pregnant. That moment generated a real earthquake in the young woman’s family who, together with her boyfriend at the time, had been strongly involved in the purity movement, an ideology that promotes sexual abstinence until marriage, for religious reasons.

Forgiveness is the central idea in Christianity that sets it apart from other religions.

In ancient Israel, the high priests wore a vest that had two stones on it called the Urim and Thummim. Whenever a question about God’s will was brought to the priest, he would ask God to give the answer. If the stone on the left glowed, it indicated divine approval. If the stone on the right glowed instead, it indicated God’s disapproval.

It is known that many Jews, some even contemporaries of Jesus, claimed to be the expected Messiah. Of these, only Jesus of Nazareth is the name that has endured over time. Still, too few of His contemporaries[1] recognized and accepted Him as the Messiah, and this reality raises a question: why was Jesus rejected?

Every few years, our Christmas lasts for a week. My husband’s family rents a large house and four generations gather from England, Germany, Denmark, Poland, Netherlands, Chile and Argentina. This year there will be more than 30 of us—including two new babies.

I’m going to be honest with you. I find prayer really hard. If I had to give reasons for all my tears over the past few years, most of them have come during conversations with God.

I grew up on the border between two different universes, not geographically but spiritually. There, across that fine line, lived more than half of my extended family, with a different worldview.

Being a Good Samaritan isn’t just about doing good—it’s about embracing the kind of life Jesus wants for each of us.

According to Google’s online search trends, the most popular religious topic among Romanian internet users in 2019 was prayer. [1]

In Milan, in 313, Constantine participated in his sister’s wedding to Licinius, where he also signed the Edict of Milan. This decree, which officially recognised and legalised Christianity, marked the symbolic end of Diocletian’s era of persecution while defining Constantin’s religious policies.

Fairy tales begin with the words "Once upon a time", which automatically send us into a timeless world of fantasy, imagination, and daydreaming.

Last week brought about the guilty verdict in the trial of George Floyd’s murderer, Derek Chauvin, causing the topic of justice to once again become a contentious issue for many people around the globe.

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.

There are days, maybe even years, that go by without us seriously questioning the meaning of our lives or whether anything we have left behind has made anybody's life better. We are afraid of an answer because it might require us to change. For John Wood, the answer came out of nowhere, in a school in the wilds of Nepal.

Every time I look through the lens of a microscope, I am struck by the realisation that beyond what the naked eye can see lies a universe far deeper and richer.