Faith

The journey "through the valley of the shadow of death" has never been easy. However, it has become increasingly lonely as our unfamiliarity with death has made us awkward and reserved when interacting with the dying.

"To feel that you have meaning is to feel immortal," psychology professor and author Clay Routledge wrote in 2014. Is this the only kind of immortality we will ever have?

Douglas Jacobs has a long pastoral and academic career, as well as many hobbies and interests. An accidental witness to an armed incident that changed his perspective on life and death, he shares his surprising experiences and lessons learned.

Aurelius Augustine (354-430) is known for the stirring Christian experience he described in his Confessions and for the seminal theological thought that has shaped theology to this day.

How can we protect ourselves against expecting too much of our friendships? Can we do something to prepare for the disappointment? And what does one do to deal with it?

According to attachment theory, originally formulated by John Bowlby and later refined by Mary Ainsworth, adults’ relational patterns are formed according to the model of the close relationship they formed in early childhood with their primary caregiver, who is usually the mother.

I have always imagined that well-being, bright prospects, good health and a clear purpose in life tend not to inspire questions about the meaning of life very often.

Trust is the main currency of the age in which we live, and people seem to be changing the directions they invest in faster than in the past. How is our life of faith influenced by how we relate generally to trust?

Norma Nashed has been running the Restore a Child organisation for more than two decades, helping 4,000 children in ten African countries.

When war kills not one but three of your children, what is there left besides hatred?

There’s something lying on a massive table. It’s a huge picture. You move closer and see that the design is made up of individual pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle. But the pattern is unusual. It isn’t an immediately recognisable image, such as a Swiss mountain or a bouquet of tulips.

The metaphor of the church as a hospital is so popular in the neo-Protestant milieu that it seems to highlight the hypocrisy of those attending church services even more. That’s what I used to believe until one day when I witnessed the opposite with my very own eyes.

During my adolescence, a Swiss author, Erich von Daniken, made waves with his theories about extra-terrestrial influences on early mankind. His most important book was called Memories of the Future. Of course, his ideas have no support today, but the idiom remains: memories of the future. Something from the past says something about what is to come.

Benjamin Solomon Carson is the famous American neurosurgeon who was the first to successfully separate conjoined twins in 1987.

I found myself at the airport, waiting to board my flight. At one point, the speakers announced the names of four people who were expected at a nearby boarding gate. Their names were called three times. Eventually, the airport staff withdrew, and the door closed behind them. Shortly afterward, a modest-looking family appeared. The confusion in their eyes, as they glanced left and...