Faith

In the opening scene of The Good Place, celestial being Michael (Ted Danson) explains that most world religions and philosophies get their respective understandings of the afterlife only about five per cent right.

Could we have a quality Christian ministry without an authentic relationship with God? Anyone can pretend in the short term, but to truly succeed in the long term you need a devotional life full of passion and a continual closeness to Jesus Christ.

A man is about as big as the things that make him angry – Winston Churchill

I generally don’t like going to funerals, but they come in many different forms and feels. Some seem sadder than others; some feel more hopeful. But often there’s an unexpected bittersweetness. We are all there because of something good—the life, love and relationship that we are there to remember and honour—that has come to a tragic end, always too soon.

“God's viewpoint is sometimes different from ours—so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things.”[1](Corrie ten Boom)

"[Jesus] told them another parable: 'The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.' He told them still another parable: 'The...

"All your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature" through the decisions you make, wrote CS Lewis. If the choices we make really have such an impact, how can Christians make sure they make the right decisions?

I was talking to the man I call Professor and I asked him, "I know you had reservations about getting baptised. Why did you decide to do it anyway? What was the deciding factor?"

Christians believe that God speaks to people. But what does God sound like? Learning to recognise the difference between God’s voice and the myriad of other voices in your head takes much patience and practice. But it is possible!

In recent weeks, the results of a Fermilab scientific experiment have caused quite a stir in the scientific community. The experiment, which dealt with some of the fundamental particles of the universe, has the potential to change humanity’s understanding of modern science. As a result, it is also raising questions about what science is, and if it can be wrong.

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

Soviet soldier Bakhretdin Khakimov was declared missing in action during the war in Afghanistan, which claimed the lives of 15,000 USSR soldiers and more than a million Afghans. Thirty-three years later, his family found out he was alive, living as a true Afghan among his former enemies.

I was there, I saw him. He was coming towards me mechanically, impassively, coldly. He suddenly stopped in front of me and waited for me to speak. For a moment, I froze. He was tall, thin, his face oval and his eyes blue, slightly sunken under his eyelids. I had met such people before, but there was something special about him.

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.

"Religion is what is in my soul. No one can take away what is there. But in public we have to comply..."