She was Swiss and she stood at the front door this morning and told me how envious she was of my family’s set-up at the university compound we call home. I nodded. She had just driven the hour from her house in Kampala to drop off her daughter to play with Hannah when we talked […]
On being a kid, terrorism, and other fears Read More »
(Christian Week – April 2015)
MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It’s easier to kiss a lamb than a lion, I suppose, even though I’ve personally never tried to kiss either.
Even in Africa all these years, I’ve never been that close to a lion.
When God kissed the world Read More »
(The UCU Standard – March 19 – April 5, 2015)
MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ As a boy I hoped for, and believed in, small and foolish things that at the time seemed big and sensible enough. Now I hope for things that are big and sensible enough to my children, even if I think they’re small and foolish to me.
Mysterious and foolish things Read More »
Even on this side of Easter, forgiveness is no easy thing. Christ said so much during a beachside breakfast with his friends on a lake not long after the remarkable events of Easter weekend. He did this during that rather poignant exchange with Peter, that friend of urgency and largeness who, just days earlier, while
We’ve heard the story so many times – Jesus died, Jesus rose from the dead – that we think we know something about something, and maybe we do know, if nothing else, a profound hope, the hope of eternal life not on some fluffy cloud playing a harp with cherubs floating around, but a hope of
A different sort of Easter bunny story Read More »
(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, March 30, 2013)
KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ I’m the odd man out in a loose circle in the campus home of the university president talking about God’s grace, an unsurprising discussion because, besides being a university and my own family’s home, this is a nearly century-old theological training centre.
The horrible news of late is the roadside murder of a young law student, John Otim, beaten dead with an iron bar for money that he didn’t even have.
Of grace, forgiveness and tears Read More »
It was in the garden where he talked to his Father. ‘Abba,’ he said, which is to say, ‘Daddy.’ ‘Daddy, I know you can do anything. And I know you can take this away from me. This cup. I know you can take it away. It’s too much. Too bitter. Too awful. Daddy. Please, Daddy,
The prayer of all prayers Read More »
(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.’
The Light of the World in the darkness of hell Read More »
