Faith

In our Christian experience, we strive for perfection, but we honestly admit we are a universe away from it. Our inability to live up to God’s standards can lead us to feel we can no longer benefit from divine forgiveness, at least not until we prove strong enough not to give into the sins we are battling.

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?

As strange as this question may seem, it is also difficult and has consequences that are not at all negligible. Even if it is not always phrased like this, or perhaps not even spoken out loud, this question arises in every home.

For many years, Dr Jonathan Ward was a military chaplain. When I talked to Dr Ward about his long career, we touched upon some sensitive topics: Does the presence of a Christian chaplain in the military mean God’s approval of military operations? How does a military chaplain serve in the context of a conflict?

I spent the end of high school in the Scandinavian school system. There, the teenager is confronted with the great questions of mankind in the context of social disciplines

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

I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. – John 14:6

The book written by John Ortberg, All the Places to Go... How Will You Know? invites us to reflect on the discerning of God’s will for our lives.

Life is a fascinating mystery and a constant challenge. Yet, often, we are not content with merely experiencing life as it is.

When I ponder the statement, “Life holds potential meaning under any condition, even the most miserable,” the story of an anonymous woman comes to my mind. She made a deep impression on me and taught me about two existential states: having, and being.

I doubt there’s a person who hasn’t heard of the Boston Marathon bombing, which took the lives of three people. As runners entered the home straight, with the finish line in sight, first one then another explosion ripped through the happy, watching throng.

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

This coronavirus crisis has, for me, some perplexing parallels with a well-known incident narrated in the Gospel of Matthew (14:22-33). The disciples are confined in a little boat in the middle of a terrible storm, almost as we are confined at home today by the emergency laws of our countries.

Whether we are cooking, repairing things, or solving life's problems, we are always learning from each other. However, when it comes to certain areas, including church life, the interchange of experiences is lacking. Communities often keep their ideas, and especially their mistakes, to themselves. Can we rediscover the deeply biblical nature of knowledge sharing?

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.