Merry Christmas!
Do you know why I love the shortest day of the year so much? Every next day there is increasingly more daylight! It changes everything. Sounds familiar? There is a beautiful phrase from the book of Isaiah that is quoted a lot around this time of the year. “Of the increase of His government there […]
Fourth Advent: Love
LOVE There’s one Dutch tradition we ditched pretty quickly after moving from the Netherlands to Italy. Some of our Dutch friends are about to be shocked. Sinterklaas didn’t make it. Ask me why later. We now enjoy giving each other gifts around Christmas instead. Two days ago I returned from teaching in a Discipleship Training […]
Third Advent: Joy
JOY Monday morning I woke up to a powerful bright light in our bedroom and the voices of Rianne and our kids singing happy birthday songs to me! They still claim it was our normal bedroom light, but I’m convinced they brought a floodlight from the nearest construction site as a last attempt to finally […]
Second Advent: Peace
PEACE The absence of conflict? When the last bullet has been fired and all weapons have been laid down? We hear about ‘peace talks’ and see images of important looking people shaking firm hands with sincere faces. Last week I wrote about the word ‘Hope’ for the first of four themes for the four Sundays […]
First Advent: Hope
HOPE Hope requires creativity. The ability to see a different future than the reality that is now. Activating hope involves engaging the imagination. Daring to hope includes a good portion of risk that things may not eventually turn out to be as you imagine they will be. Risk to be disappointed. There is a HOPE […]