It is Sunday morning. The small boy is shuffling around on a cold, hard, wooden pew. The service has not yet started; there is still a hushed murmur hanging over congregation as they wait for the dominee (pastor) to arrive through the almost secret door in the wall next to the large, relatively ornate wooden pulpit. The boy looks at his mother, who is staring intently in front of her, and so he also casts his glance forwards and upwards to the still empty pulpit. Like every week before, his eyes again catch the gold coloured embroidered wording on the crimson coloured altar cloth. It reads: "God is Liefde" (God is Love). Read more …

This past Sunday, I attended Southern Cross church, which is a new CESA congregation in Constantia in Cape Town. It was the six month anniversary of their establishment, and for the occasion, the speaker was bishop Frank Retief. He was involved with St James in Kenilworth when, in 1993, it suffered a terrorist attack which killed a number of people and maimed many more. And so he spoke to us about the question of suffering, although it was not a regular sermon. Rather, he spoke to us about the attack, describing the immediate aftermath in vivid detail, and then proceeded to explain how they as a congregation worked through the experience, trying to make sense of that horrid ordeal. Read more …