March 21, 2005
IF YOU WERE NOT WEARING IRISH GREEN LAST THURSDAY, you ran the risk of receiving a friendly pinch or punch from one of the many Irish scattered around the western world. For March 17 was St Patrick’s Day. On a stopover in Seattle airport travelling back to Europe last Thursday, I walked into a restaurant […]
March 14, 2005
WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THE MOTHER OF A SUICIDE BOMBER? Susi sat across the table from me this week and told me of a remarkable encounter she had had recently in a Palestinian refugee camp. Originally from the Black Forest in southern Germany, Susi, a free-lance photographer, was part of a small international team […]
March 7, 2005
THE MURDER OF FILM-MAKER THEO VAN GOGH, IN THE STREETS OF AMSTERDAM FOUR MONTHS AGO, triggered brief but widespread panic in political circles. Streets in Rotterdam were cordoned off as police units beseiged houses and arrested terrorist suspects. Fires were started in churches, mosques and schools. Threats of more murders of prominent politicians prompted well-known […]
February 28, 2005
IN FOUR WEEKS IT BEGINS: A FIFTY-DAY GLOBAL PRAYER AND FASTING SEASON for the YWAM family of ministries around the world. That could involve some 20,000 people in one thousand locations. Languages will include English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic, Indonesian, Korean, Hindi and Burmese. What is at stake is the healing of the nervous […]
February 21, 2005
WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH ‘HOPE FOR EUROPE’? WILL THERE BE ANOTHER HOPE.21 CONGRESS LIKE THE ONE IN BUDAPEST OVER TWO YEARS AGO? I often get asked these sorts of questions as I move around the continent. Recently in Amsterdam at a meeting of the working group of Hope for Europe, we filled up a whiteboard with […]
February 14, 2005
WE INTERRUPT THIS SERIES OF W E E K L Y W O R D S ON POPULAR TRENDS IN SPIRITUALITY TO BRING YOU AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT. At least, I think it’s important. There are some things I’m passionate about; some things that motivated me to leave Middle Earth (alias New Zealand), and to come […]
February 7, 2005
JUST A FEW SHORT YEARS AGO, SNOWBOUND AIRPORTS FORCED MY WIFE ROMKJE TO TRAVEL BACK TO HOLLAND BY CAR WITH A COUPLE WHO HAD A STRANGE TALE TO TELL. They were totally convinced that somehow Jesus and Mary Magdelene had had a child who had grown up in France and from whom Europe’s royalty had […]
January 31, 2005
I’D HAVE NEVER CHOSEN THE BOOK FROM THE CATALOGUE MYSELF. It was one of those ‘Editor’s Choice’ titles you get from the book club when you forget to send in your latest selection. But thumbing through the pages of The Autograph Man when I first opened the package, I was fascinated to pick up Hebrew […]
January 24, 2005
YUSHCHENKO’S VICTORY IN THE CONTROVERSIAL PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS IN THE UKRAINE WAS FUELED BY THE FERVENT PRAYERS OF ORTHODOX, CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT BELIEVERS ALIKE. This is the view of Sunday Adelaja, the pastor of Europe’s largest church with a membership of over 25,000. Between five and ten thousand church members prayed and showed support every day […]
January 17, 2005
FASCINATING SUPPORT FOR THE TRADITIONAL STORY OF THE THREE WISE MEN comes from Marco Polo, that intrepid Venetian explorer who opened up the thirteenth-century European mind to the east. WW-reader William Bouman drew my attention to Polo’s account in The Travels, as translated by Ronald Latham for Penguin Classics. So I took my own copy […]
January 10, 2005
YES, IT’S ALL A BIT CONFUSING. Epiphany, or Three Kings, was celebrated this past week in various European cultures, by the exchange of small gifts on January 6th. The day before, January 5th, was the twelfth day of Christmas, or Twelfth Night, the occasion for feasting on the last Christmas dinner in some traditions. Then […]
January 3, 2005
ENOUGH BAD NEWS FOR A WHOLE YEAR SEEMS TO HAVE SWEPT OVER US IN THE FEW DAYS SINCE CHRISTMAS! One of the greatest natural disasters in our time has taken a huge toll of life in a dozen Asian and African nations. Thousands of western holidaymakers are still reported missing. The estimated 140,000 deaths so […]
