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Two recent stories in Australian media shocked me to my core. Two 12-year-olds in different states took their own lives after being bullied at school. 

Grandparents who play an active role in the lives of their grandchildren enjoy a range of health and well-being benefits—including, according to research, a longer and happier life.

Big tech companies are slowly gaining more control over our lives, leading some to call them “Digital Lords”. But how do they stack up against the actual Lord?

It’s an invisible force, lurking and weighing heavily within, gradually convincing you that life isn’t worth much, that it’s better to let go. From the depths of depression, the journey back is incredibly tough, but not impossible. Kevin Breel is one of those people who can attest to this.

"All your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature" through the decisions you make, wrote CS Lewis. If the choices we make really have such an impact, how can Christians make sure they make the right decisions?

Would you rather “achieve great things or be happy?” That question was asked in a YouGov survey (United States): 81 per cent said they would rather be happy; 13 per cent wanted to achieve great things; 6 per cent were uncertain.

It is difficult to say whether there is a preferable age for facing the death of a parent, but having it happen during childhood and adolescence can have devastating effects on physical and mental wellbeing, which can extend even into adulthood.

"The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice" (Peggy O'Mara).

While the form and content of books may evolve, their essence and function will remain unchanged—“the book will remain what it is”. This is the view expressed by renowned literary figures Jean-Claude Carrière and Umberto Eco in their 2009 dialogue series titled This is Not the End of the Book.

In the age of the internet and the “global village,” an irrational fear taking hold in a small American town can easily go viral, reaching and affecting us all. Once online, news—whether true or false—can have a corrosive effect, leading us to feel cynical about the future and to hold low expectations for our leaders.

The world of the homeless is the darker side of our world. It is inhabited by vagrants, drug addicts, and the powerless. This world has its own rules, customs, pleasures, and pains, but lacks meaning and peace. And those who enter this world struggle to leave it.

When a closed window shade becomes an SOS sent by those used to living on their own but afraid of dying alone, something has fundamentally changed in a society that not long ago valued human relationships.

Holiday greetings are a nice custom, but they are also an opportunity to assess how much we care about each other, how much we have grown closer or, on the contrary, how much we have grown apart over the past year.

Anyone who thinks they know exactly how to raise a child will usually change their perspective after becoming a parent. Beyond the joy of welcoming a new family member, they are confronted with the "despair and helplessness" of navigating the complex and unfamiliar world in which they now find themselves, writes psychotherapist Isabelle Filliozat.

For anyone who has spent any time in a church context or has encountered some form of Christianity, the significance of the story of Jesus is often assumed and then summarised in the single best-known Bible verse: “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but...