I have a friend over there in those United States who really annoys me. When I ask him, ‘How are you doing?’, he responds with, ‘I’m blessed!’. It’s frustrating because when I ask how he’s doing, I really want to know! Now, Americans use that question How ya doin’? as a greeting, kind of like ‘Hi!’. And so it’s most often not a request for a 15-minute download on the state of your soul. But when I...

Many years ago when living in Ukraine I decided to get ‘back in shape’. Motivated by memories of my high-school age American football body, I was prompted to go to the gym. Throwing caution and good sense to the wind, assuming that ‘I’ve still got it!’, forgetting the degree of muscle atrophy that would have transpired over the ten years or more since I had regularly lifted weights, I packed as ma...

In the 80’s, the rapper M.C. Hammer sang 'You got to pray just to make it today'. The habit of prayer is about more than surviving a day, its about building a rich life in and with God.There is a sense in which you are your habits; you are those things that you do repeatedly. A habit is an automated behaviour that we repeat over and over again in the same context or environment and that run in our...