Five hundred hushed participants at the European Parliament Prayer Breakfast in Brussels last Wednesday listened intently as Palestinian Christian leader, Dr Jack Sara, told of the sense of hopelessness and wanton destruction that followed in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel.
It should come as no surprise that Māori whakataukī or proverbs tend to be aspirational, even if they also contain a warning. After all, Māori are guided by a strongly collectivist values set. That which is treasured in this world is that which strengthens our relationship bonds—to one another, to our habitats, to the unseen spiritual world around us. There is no greater threat to collectivist values than that which would seek to separate or divide the group.
That suffering can be redemptive sounds utterly perverse in the ears of our mainstream contemporaries. Our secular reality (and too much theology) is so thoroughly drenched in (false) Epicurean hope that it is unfathomable to think that anything bad can ultimately be good, steeped as Epicureanism is in the pursuit of pleasure. We must not fall into the trap that God intends evil so that good might result. That is perverse.
This month’s whakataukī (proverb) is: “Hē o te kotahi, hē o te katoa.” (“The mistake belongs to the collective.”). I’ve said before, I started life in Canons Creek, Porirua, Aotearoa New Zealand—a notorious neighbourhood in the 1970s, noted for its gang violence and poverty-related issues.
Politicians, diplomats and intercessors from the Nordic and Baltic nations gathered in Helsinki for a prayer breakfast near the Finnish parliament on Friday morning this week.
Getting older confronts us with questions we tend to ignore when young, healthy and active.
Early this week I tagged along with a group of thirty Dutch visitors to Brussels on a walking tour of the European sector led by two experienced Dutch journalists, Bert and Tijn.
Even before the WEA officially announced its next General Assembly in Seoul, Korea from October 27-31, 2025, news of the plans has been met with criticisms by Korean church groups who called for the preparations to be put on hold until their concerns about certain WEA leaders and the organization’s theological views are addressed. While the two first statements focused primarily on questions around pluralism and syncretism due to WEA’s engagement with Catholics, ecumenical and Muslim groups, the
