That suffering can be redemptive sounds utterly perverse in the ears of our mainstream contemporaries. Our secular reality (and too much theology) is so thoroughly drenched in (false) Epicurean hope that it is unfathomable to think that anything bad can ultimately be good, steeped as Epicureanism is in the pursuit of pleasure. We must not fall into the trap that God intends evil so that good might result. That is perverse.
This month’s whakataukī (proverb) is: “Hē o te kotahi, hē o te katoa.” (“The mistake belongs to the collective.”). I’ve said before, I started life in Canons Creek, Porirua, Aotearoa New Zealand—a notorious neighbourhood in the 1970s, noted for its gang violence and poverty-related issues.
Politicians, diplomats and intercessors from the Nordic and Baltic nations gathered in Helsinki for a prayer breakfast near the Finnish parliament on Friday morning this week.
Getting older confronts us with questions we tend to ignore when young, healthy and active.
Early this week I tagged along with a group of thirty Dutch visitors to Brussels on a walking tour of the European sector led by two experienced Dutch journalists, Bert and Tijn.
