What do we do with our heroes from the past when we discover their flaws? What shall we do with the monuments to their achievements when the latter seem overshadowed by their errors? Like so many Canadians, I was horrified to learn of the discovery of 215 unmarked graves of aboriginal children on the premises…
Two months ago in this space I recounted the story behind my longstanding interest in the biblical Psalter and its liturgical use. In the mid 1980s I came across the Genevan Psalter, with which I had previously not had much contact. My childhood church sang largely from the 1912 Psalter, with a very few Genevan…
As a young man living and studying in Minnesota, I accidentally stumbled upon a form of prayer extending back to the early church and into biblical times. I was browsing in the bookstore of Luther Theological Seminary in St. Paul and found a red paper-bound volume titled The Daily Office, with a lengthy subtitle: “Matins…
It is difficult for most of us to fathom how long Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were married. According to the Bible, the normal human lifespan is three score years and ten (Psalm 90:10), which suggests that the normal marriage might last between 40 and 50 years. But the Queen and her consort were married…
Throughout the world many Christians recite or chant on a weekly basis the ancient Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, with these familiar closing lines: “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” When repeated so frequently, it is easy to neglect their inner meaning. Yet the words nevertheless enter our…
Virtually every day when I was a boy, we heard a snippet of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address in Peace Corps advertisements: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” It summed up an ethos that sounds almost quaint today when confidence in political institutions…
As I was preparing a chapel meditation on Job some weeks ago, I read a commentary that described Job’s story as a microcosm of the entire biblical redemptive narrative. It begins with an idyllic life of one of God’s servants, takes him through the darkest valleys of affliction, brings in his friends’ proposed solutions to…
In AD 410 Alaric led his army of Visigoths into Rome and ransacked the city. By then Rome was no longer the capital of the western Roman Empire, but this single event sent shock waves throughout the known world. How could the founding city of the greatest empire in history be so vulnerable to barbarian…
The past year has been a difficult one for many people round the globe, including our family. But it has also brought undoubted blessings, and these have made my life fuller and busier than I could have imagined a short time ago. Now I am embarking on a new venture for which I hope to…
While the mainstream media often portray North American evangelicals as easily-led sheep blindly following the most notorious of television preachers, those in the know will recognize that a handful of British authors have been far more influential, including C.S. Lewis, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, John R. W. Stott and James Innell Packer, all of whom have now…
Next month Americans return to the polls to elect a president and vice-president, members of Congress, and host of state- and county-level officials. They do so at a time of unprecedented crisis for the country. What happens on 3 November will have an impact on its future as we enter the third decade of this…
It is never easy to lose a loved one. It is especially difficult when the loved one is such an extraordinarily loving and gifted man as was my father. Theodoros Antoniou – his given name – was born in the village of Koma tou Yialou, in a part of Cyprus now under Turkish occupation, to Antonios Georgiou and Pezouna Theodorou.
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