The Great Unknown

Life is fragile, but God’s love remains steadfast through every unknown road. Some years ago, while getting ready for what seemed like just another ordinary day, a breakfast television interview caught my attention. Lisa Marie Presley was speaking about music, her struggle with addiction, and the memories she carried of her father, Elvis Presley. Because…

Childhood Home

Written by Jaana M. H. JokinenTold by my mother, Mirja AnneliSeptember 1949, Kallio, Helsinki, Finland Slowly but surely, the days were growing colder and darker. School had started again, and autumn had arrived. I have always been a summer person, so even as an eight-year-old, I was not at all pleased by the changing season….

Fabric of Life

We may not understand every painful season, but we can trust that God is present and working with purpose through it all. When you look at the fabric of your life so far, what colours do you see woven through it? Which shades have been the most dominant? What patterns have emerged in the tapestry…

Second Chance

Be grateful for the life you have been given, and let that gratitude change how you live it. This year, I have found myself in circumstances I would not wish on anyone. Circumstances that have shaken me, humbled me, and brought me to a place of deep reflection. Yet it is often in life’s most…

Road Closed

When life feels overwhelming, faith gives us somewhere safe to rest. On rainy summer days, my mum used to send us children up into the attic. As an adult, I understand why. Ours was only a small cottage, and when rain kept us indoors, we children must have made the walls ring with our noise,…

Kintsugi

God does not waste our brokenness; if we allow Him, He can tenderly transform it into wisdom, compassion and beauty. Kintsugi is a 15th-century Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. The word comes from kin, meaning gold, and tsugi, meaning joinery — to join with gold. The more I think about it, the…

Life Defining Moments

We are not promised tomorrow, but while we are still here, every ordinary day is sacred, those we love are worth holding close, and every unfinished page is a gift from God. There are some moments in life that do not simply live in our memory. They mark us. They sear themselves into us so…

His Eye is on the Sparrow

God often uses the smallest, most ordinary things to remind tired hearts that His care has never left them. During winter this year, Peter and I wandered into a little corner café in the middle of the city. I took the table by the window while he went to order, and for a few quiet…

Afternoon Tea

We are each a bridge between the generations that came before us and those that come after us. I recently had my grandson stay for a couple of nights during the school holidays, and as always, the house seemed changed by his presence. It felt fuller somehow, livelier, warmer, threaded through with movement, laughter, questions,…

The Anchor Holds

The absence of answers does not mean the absence of God. Have you ever lived through a season when adversity arrives like a wave, then another, and then another still? Not the kind of wave that merely unsettles the surface, but the kind that rises suddenly and breaks over the whole of your life, sweeping…