Challenge Literature Fellowship - GlobalI was struck recently, when reading the children’s report cards that “good” is no longer good enough; “satisfactory” just isn’t; and “average” is almost equivalent to poor. In Australia, “ordinary” has become a slur.
No, now everything has to be “excellent” or “outstanding”, 3 out of 5 is just not acceptable. Even Uber drivers get canned if their ratings fall below 4,5, or so I’ve heard.
Continue readingYou might have seen a great series on Netflix that exposes the secrets of famous magicians.
The show first shows you how the trick is performed and then exposes the secret to how the illusion is achieved, and it has got me thinking about its parallels to life.Continue reading
Recently I watched the movie Collateral Beauty, starring Will Smith as a man dealing with the death of his young daughter. Two years have elapsed and Smith’s character Howard Inlet is still not coping very well, his marriage is over and he is reduced to writing hate mail to Time, Death and Love.
As Howard explains right at the beginning of the movie, “Now these three things connect every single human being on earth. We long for love. We wish we had more time. And we fear death.”Continue reading
“Feelings, nothing more than feelings,” goes the 1974 classic by Morris Albert, and sometimes our actions seem to be governed by nothing else.
How many marriages have ended because “I just don’t feel like I love you anymore”? How many people have committed suicide because they feel that life is not worth living? How many people are addicted to various substances because “it makes me feel so good”?
Continue readingThe other day I went to the doctor for a blood pressure script and she made me stand on the scale, worked out my BMI and told me I was fat and needed to lose weight. Needless to say my first response was “How dare she! Who does she think she is?!”
In my offence I went through a million justifications: “How could she embarrass me like that! Does she think she is telling me something I don’t already know? I’m not nearly as fat as some people! Doesn’t she know I’ve tried? Does she think I want to be like this? I was born with this body type.” etc. etc.
Continue readingHave you ever heard someone disparage the Easter story by saying, “Well how could God have done that to His Son – send Him to the cross. It’s child abuse!”? Besides the obvious fact that Jesus was a 33-year-old man by this stage, and not a child; He Himself refutes this argument when He says in John 10:18
No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.
Continue readingWe know well in advance that Easter is on the way by all the Easter eggs and hot cross buns that the shops start selling around Valentine’s Day. The swiftness with which the year marches towards the holiday may take us by surprise but the long weekend certainly doesn’t.
However, nearly two thousand years ago that first Easter morning came as a complete surprise to those who had watched Jesus arrested, tried and crucified.
Continue readingI have been watching interior design shows on Netflix recently. I’m inspired by the creativity and cleverness of those who take nice but ordinary rooms and turn them into works of art.
What I have noticed though is that, without fail, those rooms always look worse before they look better. The day before the big reveal, you couldn’t possibly imagine how it is all going to come together.
Continue reading
“If I were to name the emotional condition accompanying the aura created by this pandemic, it would be disillusionment. It wasn’t caused by Covid-19, but it has been highlighted amidst a culture rooted in the kind of expectations impregnated with disappointment. Long before Covid-19 came along, this intimidating truth has lurked: Life doesn’t work the way we think it does. Covid-19 simply forced us to confront some suspicions that we already contended with:
Sometimes the hardest working person doesn’t get their dream
Sometimes the most loving person doesn’t keep their family together
Sometimes the best faith community doesn’t survive
The only difference now is that we have something to blame: Covid. But I know from my experience, blaming Covid doesn’t meet my internal need for justice, because who can we blame for Covid? This question isn’t intended to take you down the usual rabbit hole of conspiracies. It is to demonstrate this: assigning blame doesn’t resolve the internal loose ends that can’t work out why things didn’t happen the way I thought they would, or should…the way that makes sense.”
So says Melanie Saward, who has recently written a book on the subject¹. Continue reading
Let us imagine that this Christmas a Covid vaccine was released that was not only free but that those that took it said was 100% effective and lasted your whole lifetime. If you took it, you would never test positive and you would never sicken or die of Covid-19. You might get a few symptoms – a cough or a bit of chest pain – but you would never get the disease.
Would you take it?Continue reading