Walking Towards Hope – a book review

One day in October of 1997 Paul Beckingham, his wife Mary and one of their young sons were taking a Kenyan boy back to his home on the edge of Nairobi. They came over a hill to find a massive Kenyan military transport coming towards them and taking up the whole road. Their lives changed … Continue reading Walking Towards Hope – a book review

A Teenage Failure

It was good to be home again, to eat my mother’s cooking, to sleep in my own bed in my own room, to help out around the farm and to visit the old buffalo rubbing stone, my rock of refuge. I was sure that the people in town thought of me as already a failure … Continue reading A Teenage Failure

The Gate of the Year

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” And he replied “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known … Continue reading The Gate of the Year

A Vagrant Without a Clue

I didn’t report the theft of the money to anyone. I never considered asking anyone for help or advice. To admit the theft would be to admit how stupid I was and face the humiliation of being publicly denounced for my stupidity. That was my state of mind at least. I don’t remember many details … Continue reading A Vagrant Without a Clue

Brain benumbed by beastly biting cold

We are in the midst of a Canada-wide cold wave, with temperatures 15 to 20 degrees below seasonal averages. (Those are Celsius degrees, too. Each one is worth 1.8 Fahrenheit degrees.) The National Post reports that it was colder in Winnipeg this morning than it was at the North Pole, the South Pole and the … Continue reading Brain benumbed by beastly biting cold

Boxing Day musings

Feasting on Christmas Day has a long and noble tradition and one is at risk of being branded a heretic if he suggests it might not be necessary. Noble in that first sentence is meant to be taken literally – for many centuries it was only the nobility and the rich who could afford to … Continue reading Boxing Day musings

The Logos

Greek philosophers believed the world had always existed and realized that there must be some active principle that made the world function in an orderly fashion. Heraclitus, Zeno and Plato described this principle that ordered and maintained the universe and permeated all reality as the Logos. Logos means word, reason, plan and all that might … Continue reading The Logos

Read the Bible for all it’s worth

I recently came across a statistic that stated that only two per cent of those who call themselves Christians have read the Bible through. If we would read any other book the way most Christians read the Bible we would soon lose interest in it. We say that we believe we are children of the … Continue reading Read the Bible for all it’s worth

How Do I “Bring People to God” Without “Shoving My Religion Down Their Throat”?

I wasn’t grown up yet

In the fall of 1959 I left home to go to university. The question of what I wanted to be when I grew up seemed to be settled - I would be an architect. During the last years of high school I began to pore over magazines with house floor plans and to draw my … Continue reading I wasn’t grown up yet