Thoughts and Other Things

It’s no secret Francine Rivers is my favourite novelist. So it goes without saying that I was pleased to find one of her latest releases added to her part of the shelve at the public library seeing that I had already read through all the other older books. I’m half way through with Bridge To Haven  and I’m loving it, I read it every chance I get. It is a lovely story, told beautifully in a way that oozes faith. I read the last chapter this morning. It’s a bad habit of mine, that when I get half way through the book, I read portions of the end (I’m inpatient like that). It’s also why I google the plot of each movie I watch. (I suck, I know.) Anyway, there’s something that has gotten to me so strongly about one of the characters in this book. I’ll try to get my point across without turning this into a spoiler. I’m so taken by how Pastor Zeke finds it so easy to trust God. His answer to everything is prayer, and once he has prayed, he refuses to feel anxious over the matter, and...

I’ve been revisiting Joseph’s story, through it learning more about forgiveness. Forgiving is one of those things we always have to be doing because, well, we live among other people and in living among them, we get hurt by their words and actions. Sometimes we are the ones doing the hurting. In most cases, when we are the ones who’ve hurt another, we expect understanding but the same doesn’t usually apply when we are the ones hurt. Forgiveness is a lovely gift to receive but a costly gift to give. Joseph was the one hurt, hurt in the worst way because the course of his life was altered by what was done to him. It also didn’t help that he was hurt this way by those closest to him, his own flesh and blood. That’s when it really cuts deep, when the pain is inflicted by those who were supposed to love and protect you.  “And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh’s household heard about it. Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I am Joseph! Is my father still living...

I am a sucker for love stories and I mourn tragic endings . Of all the photos of recently deceased Winifred Nomzamo Madikizela-Mandela that are being shared, none get to me like the ones in which she is together with her late ex-husband and former president of the republic of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Seeing them, and reading the letters they wrote one another, one cannot doubt that they were deeply in love. (I can't believe it took her death for me to want to know what really happened) They were married the year my father was born, in 1958. Only five years later, Nelson was sentenced to life in prison. It would be twenty seven years before he was released. It would only be two years before they were separated and four years later officially divorced on grounds of irreconcilable differences. Reading the different versions of this love story, I found a few red flags that contributed to its sad ending. Firstly, I think it matters the foundation a relationship is founded o...