“Lecturing countries from afar is an ineffective strategy.” That’s what Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters during a July press conference on the decision to restore Canada’s diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. Critics argue that Canada shouldn’t engage a country with such a troubling human rights record. But Carney’s government sees it differently. Whether…
I do not normally weigh in on ecclesiastical issues in this space, but given my long association with and current membership in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), I think it is appropriate to comment on Synod 2026’s decision to withdraw from the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC). I understand that church denominations have to…
I love the first day of school. It is a hopeful day. From Lydia’s early school years, I’ve been struck by the sense of unadulterated excitement and energy that rises from the schoolyard as friends see each other after long weeks away. A new community is being created. Some children and teachers are missed –…
In June I sat in the lobby of a mental health centre. What if I don’t have OCD? I wondered. I tried to push the thought away. Two years prior, a counsellor at my university suggested I see a psychiatrist to be diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Now that my name was at the top…
Something beautiful happened a few months ago as my wife and I were editing a new book on the parable of life with our son Edward – who has Down syndrome. We were working on a chapter that explored the challenge between “choosing for Edward” and “letting him choose,” when he came down the stairs…
We do have free will, just in case you were wondering. We are responsible for our decisions, at least in part because we can choose otherwise. But our free will doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Some choices are so easy to make that they barely feel like choices at all; others are so difficult to…
My welcome to Canada occurred in Alberta in 1969. Edmonton is still “home” in my heart. Through work as a policy analyst of Western Canadian issues in the 1990s, including through the Quebec referendum, I gained an appreciation of the yin-yang tensions between Alberta and Quebec that make Canada a difficult country to govern. At…
Only a minority of high schoolers enjoy solving complex math problems. I was not one of them. Usually, the best I could do was tinker with different variables and plug them into formulas on a trial and error basis in the hope of reaching a solution. Over time I became competent enough to use quadratic…
About 1200 years ago, a Persian scientist wrote two important texts about computation and arithmetic. Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī worked at the Grand Library of Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age, and was one of the most famed scholars of the period. Although there are few recorded details about his life, we do know where he…
In our retirement, my wife and I have been blessed to travel. We were in Paris at the beginning of June, where we took a river cruise up the Seine to Normandy and remembered the sacrifices Canadian soldiers made on Juno Beach. Unlike past vacations, the weather was a disappointment – cool (18-22°C highs) and…
I’ve shared before that what brings me joy is when my kids surprise me with their joy. While this has happened naturally with our older two, understanding joy through Rachel and Janneke’s eyes has taken more effort. When the girls were young, we were encouraged to try live music sessions as a way of fostering…
I was recently invited to be part of a conference in Guelph, Ontario with about thirty Canadian Christian leaders. During one personal conversation with a seminary president, I mentioned that my daughter had recently graduated from Regent College in Vancouver with a Masters of Divinity. He asked whether she intended to serve as a local…
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