Recently, a song entitled “Love Poem” has risen to the top of my “Heavy Rotation” playlist on Spotify. It’s gotten me thinking about this peculiar form of communication and its origins. Who wrote and received the first love poem? (Was it cheesy? Were red roses involved?) More fundamentally, where does the desire to express love through words come from? Most of us would agree that we enjoy the feeling of receiving love, whether by family, friends, partners, and - you might veh

I think purpose is pretty important. It gives direction and meaning, such that it feels like we’re actually doing something with our lives, contributing to something greater. It can help us through hardship, allowing us, despite the difficulties we face, to keep on striving. But purpose is only truly valuable if derived from a good source. How much meaning we gain from something depends a lot on that 'something' we are looking to gain meaning from. I think many of us would re

People are often taken aback when I mention that I'm a Christian. If I could tell my younger self, she'd probably think I was kidding. I went to a secular school in London and had never batted an eyelid about religion, let alone attended church. I had a happy childhood, a great relationship with my family, and for the most part didn't have a care in the world. What could Jesus bring to my life that I didn't already have? In my early teens the question of God's existence never

My journey with God began when I was born prematurely and kept in an incubator at hospital for over a month. My mother, despite not believing in God, made a promise that if I survived she would teach me about Him, which is how I came to read bedtime stories from a children’s Bible. At some point, I decided the Bible wasn’t for me and the bedtime stories stopped. In secondary school I even mocked the one kid in class who actually believed what was written in it, but besides se