Look up

Prolonged difficulty and struggle has a strange kind of gravity about it: it seems to pull your chin to the floor. In that position it becomes quite near impossible to laugh or enjoy anything, and it makes it difficult to remember all that you have to be grateful for. It shrinks your horizon of possibilities and the size of your world to the sphere of your boots, eyes cast down, your head hanging in hopelessness.

I've been staring at my feet for a while when I finally felt God say: look up. I know I've heard that before, so I went to look up Abraham's story in Genesis 13.

When God told Abraham to leave his home Lot went with him. Both men had quite substantial wealth (large flocks, etc.) and the land could not sustain them living together anymore. The situation became rather tense and the herdsmen starting fighting among each other. Abraham, in pursuit of peace, suggested they rather part ways and gave Lot first choice of the land. Lot chose the prime spots and left Abraham with the second best leftovers. I don't know about you, but I might have felt a little done in if I was in Abraham's shoes. I get the feeling that

Celebrate Spring 2014 with me!

There's just something about Spring. You can't see it and you can't touch it, but you can feel it. It is a sense of hope and new beginnings.

Spring has a way of making people fall in love, with life and with each other. It inspires courage to make a change and to try new things. It makes you want to clean up a little and create order out of chaos. Like fresh new grass sprouting up after a field has been burned it empowers us to believe again that the hard times will pass and that something beautiful is within reach. I was born in Spring. It is my favorite season of the year.

This Spring is a little more special for me since I've published my first book in March of this year, titled Let Your Heart Take Flight: Parables for our modern age. Quite an appropriate title for Spring, don't you think? What a better time for a heavy heart to take to flight, to shake off discouragement, loneliness and despair, and start soaring above the hardship and harsh conditions of the past cold winter months of your life? It's like

Leave a lasting legacy

They looked like they knew each other, perhaps even travelling together, but no, they had only met a few minutes ago here at boarding gate 25 in an airport somewhere in Texas. The only thing they had in common - until now - was the ensuing flight to London.

Surrounded by a sea of iPads, cell phone, earphones and the like, these strangers were becoming friends, sharing stories of far away places, daring culinary adventures, cultural awakenings and inspiring friendships they have forged along the way. In some way I felt strangely invited to share a sneak peak of their adventures.

Something about the lady with the Italian accent intrigued me. She was pulling a strange looking trolley so I asked her about it. "Where are you from?" she asked, curious about my accent. She wasn't familiar with Johannesburg, South Africa per se, but at the mention of it her face lit up with a beautiful memory, so she told me about it.