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Many people know about William Carey. He is often called the father of modern missions. He suffered a succession of unbelievable obstacles (including an unsympathetic wife who later became insane). Yet, in all of this managed to  translate all or parts of the Bible into forty languages and dialects of India.  What you may not know is that William Carey’s sister is equally an example of one who persevered. Almost totally paralyzed and bedridden, she lay on her bed in London and prayed for all the details and struggles of her brother’s work in far off India.  Few people can identify with the perseverance of William Carey in either the incredible obstacles he faced or the amazing tasks he accomplished. But we should identify with the perseverance of Carey’s sister. She persevered in doing the will of God in her invalid state.  She could not do much (at least what we tend to think of as much), but she persevered in doing what she could, in doing the will of ...

Everyone loves a tale of endurance. In most cinema stories the lead character is first introduced to us and then they face some unfortunate obstacle which they then have to overcome. Through that endurance process the audience picks up some life lessons for their own battles of endurance. One of my favourite movies about endurance is the biographical Hurricane (1999). It tells the story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (Denzel Washington) a former middleweight boxing champion who was convicted for a triple homicide in a bar in Paterson, New Jersey. It depicts his life in prison and how he was freed by the love and compassion of a teenager from Brooklyn and his Canadian foster family. In a moving scene the wrongly convicted Hurricane turns up in prison. The prison warden tells him to wear a prison uniform. He refuses by making it clear that "only guilty people wear a prison uniform". And since he is innocent of any crime, he cannot put on the identity of a convict. Thi...

The signs were sporadic, like an occasional wave that trickled further inland than the others, but eventually the erosion of Muriel's mind was too obvious to ignore. She repeated the same story to the same people, forgot to serve dessert when she hosted a dinner, jumbled the lines of the script on her radio show, and stumbled over Bible passages she once knew by heart. Still, her diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's shocked her husband, Robertson McQuilkin, who was in his fifties and president of Columbia Bible College. Robertson knew that Muriel's deteriorating condition would eventually require round-the-clock care. Should he retire from his flourishing ministry to provide that care, or should he put Muriel in a nursing home and carry on with God's business? Trusted friends urged the latter, reminding him that we must "hate" our wives for the sake of Jesus and His kingdom (Luke 14:26). Besides, Muriel would adjust to her new environment, and her slipp...

Three years ago a newspaper posed the question to its readers – is anyone faithful any more? A question it proceeded to answer and conclude that it was impossible to be faithful. Therefore we have to teach ourselves to accept that and live with it. The tragedy of the article was not just in its conclusion, which gives a hopeless picture of life, but also in its limited understanding that faithfulness goes beyond marriage. All areas of our lives require some form of faithfulness. A society in which people are increasingly unfaithful in marriage will undoubtedly lead to faithlessness in other areas e.g. work, citizen obligations. Sin is contagious. The secular vision of faithfulness stands in sharp contrast biblical faithfulness. When the Bible speaks of faithfulness it goes beyond marriage. When Paul wrote the letter to Colossians it was one of the most things that were front and centre on his mind. He introduces himself with a clear statement: Paul, an apostle of Chris...

Lauren Hillenbrand's Unbroken tells the extraordinary odyssey of Louis Zamperini who on a May afternoon in 1943, at the height of the 2nd World War, crashed into the Pacific Ocean - after returning from a bombing raid. After an agonising delay, he struggled aboard a life raft – and so begun extraordinary tale of survival, starvation and life in some of the worst prison war camps of the 2nd World War. It is a truly a break taking story of tragedy and triumph. As part of his experience Louis had come to be severely abused by some of Japan’s most notorious prisoner war camp officers. He experienced such shocking brutality! I have frankly never read of man who was so abused at the hands of another. But many years later – Louis wrote his abuser an extraordinary letter, after he heard the abuser who had been on the run was still alive: To Matsuhiro Watanabe, As a result of my prisoner of war experience under your unwarranted and unreasonable punishment, my post-war lif...

Aung San Suu Kyi. One woman's perseverance on behalf of a nation begins to pay off! After years of house arrest and persecution, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi made history by taking her seat in Burma's parliament for the first time this month.