Faith

The smell of burning food filled my tiny kitchen. “What's that smell?” I asked a friend who was sharing my house for the week. Every young man knows the smell, familiar from an early age—your first acquaintance comes from burnt toast and camping trips where, after burning everything you tried to cook, you end up eating your baked beans straight from the can.

When prayers go unanswered, faith can turn to disbelief and hope to scepticism. On the other hand, God can intervene at unexpected moments, providing unexpected answers, as happened in Zechariah's life.

Faith has brought me not only a sense of God's presence, but also evidence that He is answering our requests. Therefore, the other reasons that made me believe have become stronger.

The first part of my life was marked by multiple barriers that placed me in a minority status.

Choir rehearsal had begun only five minutes earlier, but I was already restless. Using a convenient excuse, I slipped out quietly, thinking about the crooked piece of rebar I had hidden a week before. It was exactly what I needed to force open the lock on the door without a handle, deliberately left that way so no one could enter the construction site...

To nothing else is the name of God so often linked in our human discourse as to suffering and deliverance. This locus is a huge and complicated intersection of our existence.

On April 26th 1986, reactor 4 at Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded. The effects were catastrophic­­—it was the worst nuclear disaster in history. The explosion let out the equivalent of 500 Hiroshima bombs-worth of radiation, and the area around Chernobyl—including the town of Pripyat—is now uninhabited. It will be unsafe to live there for the next 20,000 years.

The mix of emotions a family goes through when expecting a baby is both wonderful and terrifying. When everything seems to be in order, the...

Hendel Butoy was born in Brazil and raised in southern California. He studied at the California Institute of the Arts, and was then offered a position as an animator at Walt Disney in 1979.

What I love most about Jesus is the deeply personal, highly individual way He relates to people around Him—the openness, genuine interest, and respect...

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?

I grew up in a small town called Utsunomiya, three hours away from Tokyo. When I was a child, I was certain that there was a God and that He loved me. Then I grew up and began to wonder, “If there is a good God, why is there so much suffering in the world? Why do innocent children die? Why is the...

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

In the maximalist search for evidence that can justify our belief and, at the same time, help us defend our reputation, something is lost: the very concept of faith.

At the age of 20, I graduated from the Orthodox Theological Seminary. I thought I was talented, I was confident, and I had a very clear idea of the path I wanted to take in life. I had all the answers. Or perhaps I hadn't asked myself enough questions.