Perhaps some of life’s deepest sorrows are inseparable from its greatest blessings. My 90-year-old dad is slowly slipping away. Day by day, the flame in his candle grows dimmer, and I find myself watching that light with a grief too deep for words. There is something so heartbreaking about loving someone for your whole life…
Category: Reflections
The Waiting Heart
There are stories we carry for years before life gives us the experience to understand them. On Sunday night, I found myself waiting for my seventeen-year-old grandson to arrive. He was making his own way from home to our place, travelling more than one hundred kilometres from door to door. I had a warm meal…
A Tender Legacy
We may never see the full answer to our prayers, but their blessings may reach far beyond our lifetime. As part of a six-week course I am doing, I was asked to take a test to discover which emotions most strongly drive me. When the results came back, they stopped me in my tracks. The…
He is Risen!
Sometimes we arrive at a moment believing we know how the story ends, only to discover that God has written something we never imagined. There is an ancient and joyous Paschal greeting that has echoed across generations of Christians, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ and proclaiming hope, new life, and the victory of life…
Love Like That
The deepest response to extraordinary love is to let it transform our lives. The cross is a hard thing to look at. It is rough wood. Cruel wood. A place of suffering and shame, where human beings were nailed and left to die. There is nothing gentle about it. Nothing soft. Nothing in the scene…
Love Kneels Down
Sometimes the most ordinary acts of service carry the most extraordinary love. On Maundy Thursday, I find myself deeply moved by the thought that love kneels. Not proud.Not distant.Not hurried.But low enough to wash feet.Low enough to serve.Low enough to remain tender, even with suffering already gathering at the door. There is something about that…
A Year of Reflection
Sometimes it takes standing between generations to truly recognise where we are in our own journey. I have often found myself thinking of life in chapters of ten years. There is something about a decade that seems to give the passing of time a shape. Ten years can sound like such a long stretch when…
The Gift of Lament
Sometimes the greatest kindness is allowing someone to be honest about their pain without asking them to find the bright side. I was probably in my early twenties when I read a book that would leave a lasting impression on me. I cannot remember every detail of what was written, but one thought settled so…
Writing While Able
Sometimes we forget that what we are able to do today is itself a gift worth treasuring. For some years now, I have lived with a certain kind of uncertainty, the kind that quietly follows me even on ordinary days. It is not always loud. Sometimes it sits far enough in the background that I…
The Stories We Keep
The stories we hear again and again often become the ones we carry long after the storyteller has fallen silent. There is something about the smell of cardamom and cinnamon in the kitchen, and the feel of flour on the bench, that seems to loosen old stories and bring them back to the surface. When…
