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Unusual gifts

Unusual gifts

Last week I got given a gift that was pretty cool, in fact it was out of the ordinary. It was the kind of gift that blows you away. I thought I was just turning up to a BBQ get-together for the Mosaic Workshop artisan hub that my friend Tim and I used to run. .

  • Repeat offender

    Sinning feels great. Sinning feels awful. Sinning can feel a lot of things, and the all-encompassing factor is how addictive it can be.

  • Culture shock in Cambodia—he said what?!

    It was a hot Cambodian evening. The air was thick, sticky, sweet and sour all at the same time. Thirty of us were crammed on a bus travelling back to Phnom Penh in time for the massive water festival celebrations. My husband, Andrew, and I began chatting to the guy sitting across the aisle.

  • How to touch the world after your death

    My eyes were puffy, my heart sad. I’d been to two funerals in the past fortnight and now I was attending another. None of these were for people I had been especially close to, but, still, I was one of many who had gathered to farewell and honour and remember.

  • Airbrushing abstinence

    What does abstinence look like? A body odour which only disappears on your wedding day? Or a giant metal belt that activates a siren if someone gets too close?

  • Give the microphone to death

    I'm 26 and I can't stop thinking about dying. I have no real reason for this preoccupation other than a few early grey hairs and a growing tendency to drive my car into stationary objects.

  • Five things to learn from death in order to truly live

    Recently I attended a funeral of an amazing man called Jared Noel. He died at the age of 33, and he had lived an extraordinary life. Since his death I've been contemplating what I can learn from someone who saw his own death coming, from someone who faced death head on.

  • Being a Christian athlete

    As we stood on the sideline of the soccer pitch, I asked my friend from church, “Chris, how does being a Christian effect the way you play sport?”

  • A ‘been there, done that’ Christian?

    I love a good computer game—especially a new one. As a kid I remember fighting my way to be first to play any new game we got. When we got the original Duke Nukem I wanted to be the first to complete the game.

  • Mother Teresa's legacy in my life

    Mother Teresa passed away more than a decade ago, but her legacy still lives on. It has also changed my life. In February this year, I went to Kolkata (Calcutta) to trace the footsteps of Mother Teresa. A close friend of mine from Malaysia joined me and together we volunteered with the Missionaries of Charity for several days.

  • Sometimes the earth moves

    Kiwi folk singer Jess Chambers captures the mixed blessing of life in New Zealand in her song ‘Island’: "I live on an Island. Close to the sea … Sometimes the earth moves … We live on an Island. Made from the same dust we walk over … We live on this Mountain. Forget ourselves, think we are greater. Sometimes the earth moves..."

  • Bears and their cubs

    The debate certainly continues to rage around homosexual marriage as it goes through the stages of being legalised in New Zealand, with Christian media around the world maintaining that we should be the vanguards of Christian morality.