Give us this day our daily beauty
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Give us this day our daily beauty

It is early. A woman steps out of her front door, hitches up her skirt. In her hand is rice powder. It’s not yet sunrise. She has already swept and dampened the ground. Now she bends, dots the earth, and draws outward a design that is both geometric and freeform. It is kolam, a traditional…

Faithful friends are good medicine
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Faithful friends are good medicine

My wife sometimes compliments me as a husband. “I’m strictly average,” I remind her. I don’t want expectations to rise. Marriages today are emotionally overloaded. We want someone who will be a lover, spouse, soulmate and friend – someone who “completes us,” as Hollywood suggests. This is much more than the biblical “suitable partner.” High…

When death is part of the story
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When death is part of the story

Eight students died last year at the University of Waterloo. I should clarify that: eight students in the Engineering department alone. I don’t know the total number across campus. I don’t know much about the cause of death, either, though I understand only one of the eight was by suicide. It feels strange to say…

COVID etiquette

COVID etiquette

I just started reading The Madness of Crowds, the newest Louise Penny book. It’s part of a quintessentially Canadian murder mystery series set in fictional Three Pines, Quebec. Penny’s books are beautifully written, tightly woven, plot-driven masterpieces; and she’s put out a new one every summer since 2005 like clockwork. Last year, while writing The…

An ode to millennials
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An ode to millennials

My two adult children are both in their early thirties, married, with kids. Whenever I visit them I leave with my head spinning, my heart full, concerned, admiring and grateful. This is my ode, not simply to my children, but to so many of their age, the much-maligned millennials, for the gift that they are….

Do Reformed folks know how to fight?
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Do Reformed folks know how to fight?

Maybe the answer seems immediately obvious – of course we do, we fight all the time! So much, in fact, that schism is one of our chief contributions to the broader history of the Christian church. But do we know how to fight well? I don’t mean tactically, or strategically. Instead, since I believe everything…

Our homeschool year
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Our homeschool year

August 2020 The approach of September, six months into a global pandemic, is terrifyingly complicated for almost everyone we know. Will schools stay open? Are they safe? Will our kids learn enough at home? What will they miss? “They’ve decided to homeschool.” My mom is talking to a friend on the phone. “Grades 4, 8…

The renovation
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The renovation

Back in October we decided to update the paint colours in our kitchen and living room, and before you know it the whole thing spiralled out of control into a full-scale renovation. We’d been saying for years that at some point we’d finish the basement to create an extra bedroom and family living space, and…

Silkworms and star clusters, butternuts and alevins
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Silkworms and star clusters, butternuts and alevins

They are tiny. Whiplash spines with two dark eyeballs and a sagging orange egg sac belly. They torpedo along the bottom of the pale blue trough, crowd each other. I can’t see the fins that beat invisibly, thin as a breath, as one by one, each in its own mysterious time, the tiny fish struggle…

Imagine new worlds
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Imagine new worlds

For a Christian, imagination is not the sole domain of the artsy and literary types. The imagination is every Christian’s home country. Survival is insufficient, as Star Trek’s famous quote tells us. We must all explore beyond the visible and the known to somewhere better. So let the writers’ circles have their creativity training in…

Reformed gifts for today
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Reformed gifts for today

Public discourse in North America is especially turbulent. I often want to call “time out.” The responses to Jim Joosse’s recent article on human rights pushed me to dive in with this call for our reflection. The topic of human sexuality is only the most recent “issue” in a long list of important questions. It…

A plea for unity in the Church during COVID
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A plea for unity in the Church during COVID

The first Liberation began in Utrecht. It was August 1944, after the Synod of Reformed Churches in the Netherlands kicked Klaas Schilder out of the denomination. It was a disagreement over common grace. This decision triggered one of the largest Dutch church splits since the Reformation. Over the next two years, 80,000 people followed Schilder…