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Young love can be intoxicating, exhilarating and filled with passion. While many young relationships are healthy and positive, some can take a concerning turn. 

Looking back, I realize how the ferocious world beneath the heavens is tamed, at crucial moments, through communication on that biblical Ladder of Jacob.

Recently, I went trekking in Nepal. Sometimes upon returning from a trip, I feel the pressure to return with exciting stories—the near-death experiences and anecdotes that leave people wide-eyed and laughing.

When we think of gratitude and a lack of gratitude, the biblical scene that comes to mind is the healing of the ten lepers, of whom only one, a Samaritan, returned to thank the Saviour, worshiping and praising God in a loud voice (Luke 17:15-16).

After a chance meeting of mutual friends, I was introduced to Tim and Sonia in a restaurant in central Toowoomba, Queensland, eight days before their home was washed away.

Let him that would move the world first move himself. – Socrates

In 2016, I noticed advertising for a new quiz show called Hard Quiz coming to ABC TV in Australia.

"The Clifford Goldstein story" is addressed to those who, ever so often, feel the need to read something about experimentation, because it is not about theorising a rebellious young man's search for the path of life, but rather a true-life story.

Sometimes I think I was born with a magnifying glass in my hand, one through which I critically scrutinize everything I do and say and which relentlessly magnifies every imperfection.

The whirlwind of activities and deadlines that adult life throws at us often makes us resistant to closeness. We abandon old friends and neglect building new relationships until inevitably, the day comes when we start feeling pressed against the self-erected walls of loneliness.

Our number of friends tends to decrease as we get older, but this trend, which has many negative effects, can be actively combated even when old age has already set in.

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” (Rudyard Kipling)

These days, we are free to believe anything and to be anything, at least in theory. However, if we gave history a closer look, we would realise that it is not beneficial for us to believe or be just anything. We agree with the biblical exhortation, often distorted by popular lore: "...test them all; hold on to what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

After 27 years of marriage, billionaire couple Bill and Melinda Gates publicly announced their divorce in May, sending shockwaves across the globe.

Crouched in the trenches of the horror of old age, modern individuals no longer wish to recover anything from the natural ageing process that their ancestors practised with such serenity. On the contrary, the first signs of physical decline become the raw material for a wide range of efforts (from picturesque to sickly) to forge a youth that the mirror refuses to restore.