When we are young, we don’t bother to think much about our eventual demise, assuming that a good half century or more stretches before us, if God is willing. During my own youth, I was more likely to worry about what I would fill those future years with so as not to waste the gifts…
We first met when we were both first-year university students. Carina was a fine arts major at the new campus of Redeemer College, and I was an engineering major at a nearby university. I had travelled to Redeemer to visit some friends and I can still picture the spot in the hallway where our eyes…
These days it’s been hard to be a pastor at Bethlehem’s Christmas Evangelical Lutheran Church. What do you say on Sunday after the bombing in Gaza on Friday night, when we didn’t sleep all night trying to get news, fearing the worst? Seventeen people were killed in one bombing, including the sister of one of…
Robert Bruinsma remembers the day his friend, Sam, told him he was going to die. It was a few days before Christmas 2017, and Bruinsma was visiting Sam (not his real name) in the hospital. Sam told Bruinsma that his request for medical assistance in dying (MAID) had been approved and would be carried out…
In most cases, determining if someone has died is straightforward. Breathing ceases, the heart stops, and we know the person has left us and gone to be with our Lord. But it’s not always that simple. Modern technology and medical knowledge mean death can sometimes be prevented or deferred. People can be resuscitated, such as…
Born in Jackson, Michigan, to Frances Marie Hyder and Eino Korpinen, my mother had a difficult upbringing. Her father left the family when she was quite small. When Marie remarried a few years later, my mother had to endure an abusive alcoholic stepfather. It was not a promising start. But few have exhibited the grace…
The Anglican Church of Canada – my home denomination – released a report in 2020 suggesting “there will be no members, attenders or givers” by 2040. In 1961 our peak membership was made up of 1.35 million souls. A mere 40 years later, these numbers were halved. By 2017, membership dropped to 282,412. By all…
We live in confused times. The Government of Canada hosts two websites standing in tension with each other. The first is titled, “Preventing suicide: Warning signs and how to help.” It lists the phone numbers of crisis centres and offers advice for helping those at risk. It then lists the websites of other agencies and…
The show The Good Place is one of the most remarkable things to ever appear on television. It is a show about the afterlife – and behind the all-star cast was an all-star team of PhDs who loaded the scripts with quotes and ideas from moral philosophy. In one scene, an angel named Michael muses…
I met James in 2008 when I interviewed him for a job. He was about my age. He had a son about my son’s age. He was recently divorced, too, just like me. He liked politics, Star Trek, old movies and NFL football, and I liked three out of four of those things, too. It…
J. Todd Billings’ End of the Christian Life is the most profound, challenging and comforting book I’ve ever read about death and life. As well it pulled me back to my grandfather’s death decades ago. Soon after immigrating to Chicago in the early 20th century, Jacobus Cornelis Dekker changed his Dutch name to James Cornelius;…
Sometimes books appear when they are needed, and the timing of Christiana Peterson’s new book is particularly apt. With the world living through a global pandemic and the realities of mortality prominent in new and frightening ways, Awakened by Death: Life-giving Lessons from the Mystics offers to accompany us as we look our fears of…
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