All Articles

Allowing room for pain and grief in children’s and young adult literature allows readers to avoid the shame of not living a life full of happily ever afters. When stories include sharp, painful corners, there’s room for readers' own sharp, painful corners.

I look forward to joining the old and the new and healing some of the pain of the intervening years, remembering that life is filled with highs and lows and change, but in the end there is hope—a hope that isn’t dependent on a changing world, but on a God who never changes.

Debra Rienstra is right—Christians need to talk about economics.

This is the second in a two-part series of responses to the Christian Reformed Church Synod of 2023.

We invited several members of the Christian Reformed Church to respond to this summer’s Synod. More responses are coming next week.

Thinking through narrative is Jesus’ primary pedagogical mode: a man goes on a journey, a woman searches for a coin, a son goes astray, a servant makes a bad investment. Whatever the perspective, there is ample evidence that societal attitudes—on whatever issue, whether toward smoking or politics, war or sexuality—are affected more by story than by law. Thus, stories both encourage and constrain us, depending on our ability to critically interpret and respond to these narratives.