August 1, 2005
FROM THE OLD WOODEN PRAYER TOWER OVERLOOKING THE GRAVEYARD ‘GOTTES AKKER’, we looked out over the treetops to the brown-tiled roofs of the eighteenth-century town of Herrnhut. Green and golden fields rolled eastwards towards distant steamclouds rising from a Polish power station, and southwards to pale blue mountains in the Czech Republic. In the near […]
July 25, 2005
WE PARKED OUR BUS JUST OUTSIDE THE STAR-SHAPED DEFENCE EMBANKMENTS AND WALKED INTO THE PICTURESQUE TOWN, just twenty minutes’ drive outside of Amsterdam. A large bronze statue outside the first church we came to told us we were headed in the right direction. Few Dutch people could tell you who this imposing figure represented, but […]
July 18, 2005
PRAGUE! ONE OF MY FAVOURITE CITIES… built on a bend in the river whose name I can never remember – the Vltava. The Charles Bridge lined by statues and artists, the cathedral and the castle on the hill, the Old Town Square with its astronomical clock whose apostles appear every hour on the hour, and […]
July 11, 2005
WORD HAS JUST COME IN THAT THE YOUNG WOMAN WE HAVE REFERRED TO AS NATASHA IN PAST WW’S GOES ON TRIAL THIS FRIDAY. Al Akimoff, our director for Eastern Europe reports that the situation looks nasty, and calls for special prayer that a miracle of justice would happen there in Russia. Her actual name is […]
July 4, 2005
WARTBURG CASTLE STANDS HIGH ON A ROCKY MOUNTAIN, close to the former Iron Curtain in Eastern Germany. Our bus slowly climbed its way up the tree-covered access road towards the collection of stone towers and half-timber buildings comprising the castle. We could look back towards the Fulda Gap, the low rolling landscape considered the most […]
June 27, 2005
WITH GREAT ANTICIPATION WE THREADED OUR WAY THROUGH THE STREETS AND CANALS OF AMSTERDAM towards the Biblical Museum. This would be our first of many museum visits during the two-week Share the Heritage tour. We had gathered in De Poort, the YWAM training centre in Amsterdam, twenty-two of us from eight different countries. After introductions […]
June 20, 2005
IT’S THE SUMMER SOLSTICE IN THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE, the winter solstice south of the equator. Let’s pause to reflect on this amazing phenomenon we take so much for granted. Our sun is just a very small star, in a very large universe, all created by an infinite Creator! I’m grasping a few moments during a […]
June 13, 2005
CONVERSATIONS IN HUNGARIAN AND ROMANIAN SWIRL AROUND ME on the night train from Sopron in Hungary to Medias in Romania. Nothing is intelligible to me until suddenly I heard the words, ‘Da Vinci Code’. I prick up my ears but of course cannot understand anything except the occasional accented phrase, ‘Da Vinci Code’. Two days […]
June 6, 2005
THE PROFESSOR WAS EXPLAINING TO HIS STUDENTS that, while in many languages a double negative made a positive, a double positive never made a negative. From the back of the lecture hall came the cynical response, “Yeah, right!” Could last week’s double negative-from the French and the Dutch-turn out to be a positive for Europe? […]
May 30, 2005
SOMETHING SURPRISING IS GOING ON IN FRANCE, FAR FROM THE MADDING DEBATE ABOUT THE EU CONSTITUTION. Observers are detecting a post-secular renewal of spiritual interest. Not that anyone suggests this was a factor in the French ‘NON’. But while the spotlight is on this country, let’s take a deeper look at what may be a […]
May 29, 2005
FEW PLACES REVEAL THE MANY LAYERS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY LIKE THE DANUBE WATERFRONT OF BUDAPEST. This week Romkje and I, along with other evangelical leaders, visited the Hungarian capital for a cluster of meetings relating to the spreading networks and partnerships across the continent. Budapest, one of our favourite cities, is split by the Danube […]
May 23, 2005
‘SO FAR, SO GOOD!’ SAID THE OPTIMIST as he hurtled towards earth after jumping out of the aeroplane without a parachute. ‘So far, so good!’ say the optimists as the proposed EU constitution hurtles towards the French and Dutch referenda … with diminishing prospects for a soft landing. This week promises to be crucial in […]
