Gardening can be great fun, but it can also be a time to build into the life of your family. The family that gardens together — developing and cultivating God’s creation — grows together. Me and Gardening Horticulture isn’t a strength of mine. Given the choice, I’d side with Bear Grylls over Sir David Attenborough; watch technology, and war history documentaries, over a Monty Don walk through French provincial gardens.  (Nothing ...

Not all TV dads are the same. Take examples like Tim Allen’s sharp-witted Mike Baxter, and contrast him with Matt Groening’s, feckless Homer Simpson. Forget for a moment that we’re talking about cartoon vs. human. In any greatest-dad-of-all-time celebrity boxing match, we know Baxter would win. The outdoor man vs. the “Duff” guzzling, obese, inattentive, drooling, lounge lizard. A father with strength, humility, and a no-nonsense embrace of free speech, up ...

There I was, staggering down the dark hallway at 5.30 a.m., trying not to wake the children. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. What is that, I thought? Maybe a mouse? No, it looks bigger than a mouse. Maybe it’s a rat? Peering down in the darkness, I realised it was a frog. But how did such a large frog get into the house? All of these ...

We are in the middle of celebrating Easter.  Our children think that Easter is all about chocolate eggs and rabbits, but of course it is really about something far deeper and stronger.  Good Friday is called ‘good’ because it celebrates the death of Jesus Christ on a cruel cross, and Easter Sunday is a celebration of his resurrection.  Many people think of Jesus as effeminate, or as Larry Norman said, ‘a ...

As a boy my dad used to tell my brother and I stories before we went to bed. We would even sing a song, “Tell me a story” if he was short off the mark. Our favourite stories were Dad’s Snake Stories, most of them real. They would always end with Dad killing the snake and putting the dreaded killer snake on a nearby ants’ nest. The ants then threw a ...

There are quite a few things that I like about the Easter holidays. I like the traditional early morning surfs at my local beach. The king tides sometimes cover a rock outcrop that normally remains exposed at high tide. When the swell is small, this produces a nice little wave that I usually get to surf on my own. By the time other surfers become aware of it, the tide begins ...