Theology

Little Welsh girl Mary Jones anxiously walked the 40 kilometres. She couldn't wait to buy a Bible in her language, as she had been saving for it for more than six years. But when she reached the shop of Mr Charles, her pastor and teacher, she found with despair that all the Bibles were either sold or already spoken for.

Noemina is a graduate of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, where she majored in health care. She is working in her field as of 2012. The journal excerpt she sent to us reflects her week-long experience at the epicentre of the battle with the new coronavirus in the intensive care unit, where serious cases are admitted.

When I was four years old, my younger brother was born. My parents focused on my brother and spent less time with me. It was only 40 years later that I discovered how this had affected me.

In The Legacy of John Calvin, David W. Hall divides leaders into two categories. Some predict the future, and others change it. Calvin, Hall said, is in the second category.

The (metaphysical) Truth does not allow us to judge Him. According to the Bible, He expects to be believed and accepted so that He can be understood and evaluated. In contrast, the Truth is the One who judges us.

Richard Dawkins is arguably the world’s best-known atheist. His 2006 book The God Delusion was a runaway success and widely influential. That’s why theologian Alister McGrath was surprised when a young man told him he became a Christian after reading The God Delusion.

Rediscovering the blessing that resides in the little things of life has been one of the challenges of every season I've lived through. This is the conclusion I always come to when I take a moment to reflect.

God uses the traits we dislike as well as our weaknesses to create something great, beyond our abilities and imagination. This is the message that pervades the pages of "The Woman with the Book", the biography of the missionary Gladys Aylward.

To know God is an aspiration inherent in the rational being who recognises His existence.

Anecdotally, they say that fear of public speaking is the biggest fear of mankind, after fear of death. Everyone smiles at this order of priorities, but no one disputes or discusses the fear at the top of the ranking.

Life is a stage that we enter without a script, although we are constantly influenced by forces of varying visibility: social, educational, religious, economic, and political.

The stakes are high when it comes to identifying the one to whom we should pray, and we can discover who by answering an apparently simple question: Can we expect prayers to be heard no matter who we address them to?

Jesus Christ is certainly the most fascinating and controversial person in human history, if we look at how He has been understood throughout the history of Christian thought. But how did Jesus understand Himself?

For some, it is an old-fashioned tradition, fanaticism or bizarre practice. For others, a talisman to attract divine favour. Is there anything more to the Bible than an intimidating jumble of genealogies, symbols, and instructions?

“We need a Bible like this,” said Reverend Richard Cizik, Vice President of the National Association of Evangelicals in America, at the launch of the first Green Bible in 2010. Current environmental issues demand an ecological Bible, where passages about the quality of divine creation and care for nature entrusted to us by God are highlighted in green, Cizik says.