Faith

In 2004, we experienced firsthand one of the most devastating tsunamis of our century. It was early morning, on Boxing Day.

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

Along with the rising death toll due to coronavirus complications, a usually latent aspect of our fear becomes harder to ignore. Despite the fact that it is the only certainty we all share, realising that our own end is a reality we might need to confront sooner than we had thought leaves many of us fervently searching for consolation.

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...

One night while checking on his patients in a palliative care centre, the therapist risked asking a confusing question to a person whose universe had shrunk to the size of his sickbed: “What brought you joy today?” The answer was immediate: “Being alive.”

We carry sad stories with us, and the meaning of these stories often eludes us. What if we discovered that these stories provide unique opportunities to change lives? Cori Salchert discovered, through family tragedy, the resolve and desire to take care of children with terminal illnesses.

I had a ringing in my ears due to that unusual inner silence which I was paradoxically experiencing at the same time as a thought-storm that made me scream on the inside. 

For me, 2022 was the year of waiting—a word that managed to define our lives, thoughts and actions to an unexpected degree.

"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?

When I was 20, my spiritual life felt like an exam where I had been given a topic I hadn’t prepared for.

Jeddah is different, at least according to its city motto. This Saudi Arabian port city on the Red Sea is home to more than 4 million people and is a gateway to Mecca: the holiest city in Islam. Millions of pilgrims come through Jeddah to visit Mecca, some 65 kilometres to the east, and Medina, Islam’s second holiest city, 360km to the north.

Have you ever seen the early morning worship programs on television? The packed congregations, the huge church venues, the smooth-talking evangelist who delivers the perfect sermon . . . Church seems to be where the action is. That there are so many new mega-churches popping up all over the world suggests that a lot of people are desperate for spiritual guidance and fellowship....

Nothing else on earth judges a person as ruthlessly as their own conscience, and truthfully, nothing else should. The painful process happens before and after the harm has been done.

When all we have left is God and He remains silent, we need a faith that endures, even when our resources are depleted and we feel as though we have been forgotten.

Although we experience more positive than negative elements in life, we are still more intensely and more quickly affected by the unpleasant ones. How can we protect our joy of living despite the problems that beset us?