Newspaper columns Archives – Page 32 of 60

We’ll be home for Christmas (for more than mere words)

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / December 21, 2013 / 2013, childhood anxiety, Christmas, fatherhood, parental fears, parenthood, suffering, the incarnation, the Word, today's children, words / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, December 21, 2013)

ENTEBBE, UGANDA ✦ It’s the end of another year of words.

Words that have routinely informed us and words that have even sometimes, like summer snow, given a fresh look at everyday things. Like what happened recently in Africa during my children’s nightly reading, a story both troubling and reassuring.

“You know,” I said, after, “things will happen in your life. Bad things. And nobody will be able to save you from them. I won’t be able to and neither will your mother. But let me tell you something. God loves to take these sorts of things and turn them into something good.”

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A measure of success

1 Comment / Christian Week, Newspaper columns / December 9, 2013 / 2013, Christianity, definition of success, Korea, Korean church history, Korean culture, Korean mission movement, South Korea, spirituality / 3 minutes of reading

(Christian Week – December 2013)

DAEJON, SOUTH KOREA ✦ It was on the tenth floor café of a mega-church of 10,000 in this South Korean city, beside a floor-to-ceiling window, where a young man greeted me with a “sir,” and oh, by the way, did I have a word for him, any nugget, anything to help his future?

He knew I was involved with a missions’ conference some floors below and his spirit was so genuine – this is the beauty of Korean culture – that I was and wasn’t surprised when he asked particularly what I thought “success” was.

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And now onsreen in Uganda, it’s Rob Ford

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / December 7, 2013 / 2013, African politics, Gandhi, JFK, leadership, politics, Rob Ford, Toronto, Toronto mayor, Toronto politics / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – November 23, 2013)

KAMPALA, UGANDA – When Rob Ford first appeared onscreen in Africa I was sitting in front of some public televisions, a place where I often work, reading about Ghandi.

It was strange because Gandhi, the great Indian leader, led a fifth of the world’s people to democracy in his bare-feet, boney and malnourished and wrapped in just a sort of bed-sheet, while the burly mayor of Toronto has become a small man even while, in heavy shoes, he’s fallen with such a thud that it somehow has to be heard around the world.

The last time I recall Ontario news making it this far was six years ago when the Shedden massacre involving the infamous Banditos gang got a couple of paragraphs in a Ugandan daily.

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What suicide can teach us about fear and living freely

Leave a Comment / Newspaper columns, The Standard / November 1, 2013 / 2013, African university life, Christianity, family, family life, Jesus Christ, relationships, spirituality, suffering, suicide, theology / 4 minutes of reading

(The UCU Standard – Friday, November 1, 2013)

MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ Suicide is a shabby and shameful business, something that nice people don’t get mixed up in, yet here they are, two suicides in our university family, two young people who in separate incidents have left us with nothing but a disturbing ‘good-bye.’

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War may be hell, but it’s strange too

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / October 24, 2013 / 2013, cold war, Korean tourism, Korean unity, Korean War, North Korea, Panmunjeom, personhood, pseudo war, South Korea / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, October 24, 2013)

PANMUNJEOM, SOUTH KOREA ✦ We’re at the border of North and South Korea, at the planet’s hottest line in the sand, and the guard – a youth in military garb and dark sunglasses – tells my wife to change her footwear. She has open sandals and the North Koreans, even from a distance, might see her feet.

Which shows that while war may be hell, it’s strange too, certainly this pseudo-war at Panmunjeom, the UN’s demilitarized zone, the so-called DMZ separating these two Koreas, countries that stopped formal shooting 60 years ago but still without any treaty.

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When the poor come knocking

Leave a Comment / Hamilton Spectator, Newspaper columns / October 21, 2013 / 2013, African culture, deception, ethics, Mzungus, poverty, rich and poor, suffering / 4 minutes of reading

(The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, September 20, 2013)

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ It was late and dark and unusual because the visitor lives hours away and I didn’t expect him. But he came anyway and sat at my front door and cried and told me all about it, how thieves had come the night before.

He had been at church, he explained, at one of those all-night prayer services common in this part of Africa, when the rats did it, when they broke in and cleaned out his house. Clothing, furniture, cash I had recently given for his kids’ schooling, everything gone by sunrise.

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A matter of the heart

Leave a Comment / Christian Week, Newspaper columns / October 1, 2013 / 2013, appearances, holiness, legalization of marijuana, legalization of pot, pot / 3 minutes of reading

(Christian Week – October 2013)

KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ The thing about marijuana is that it stinks up the joint and brings images of barefoot hippies and stoner movies and general rebellion, none of which is very attractive to the clean-cut religious crowd. The sorry thief on the cross? A pot smoker no doubt. Probably a dealer.

But the times, they are a changin’.

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Attracting partnerships and fresh thinking in Africa

2 Comments / Newspaper columns, The Standard / September 23, 2013 / 2013, African university life, Jean Chamberlain Froese, partnerships, relationships, Save the Mothers, Uganda Christian University / 3 minutes of reading

(The UCU Standard – Monday, September 23, 2013)

MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ The old Yiddish joke goes like this. ‘Do you know what makes God laugh? People making plans.’

This is the mystery of it, of the Gospel itself, really. Even our lives, fragile and short as they are, are not ours to over-script. No, we need to open them to possibilities outside ourselves, and when we do, surely good surprises will come along the way.

It’s as true for any person as it is for an institution like UCU. I was reminded of this while around the dinner table – twice – during my family’s recent season back in North America.

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