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I grew up in Yugoslavia. Christianity wasn’t banned, but nobody ever spoke about faith. I never heard anything about it. I thought the Bible was make-believe and fairy tales. I thought that people who read the Bible were off their heads in la-la la...

‘About 10 years ago, I was very, very ill and the doctors couldn’t see how to treat me. I basically had two years at home confined to a wheelchair. I didn’t see anyone except my husband and girls. I slept and looked out of the window. I couldn�...

I couldn’t see the point of Sunday School. My friends were more interested in football and I preferred it too, so I refused to go on Sundays. My parents weren’t that happy. We went to the Keswick Convention, a Christian camp. I wasn’t that inte...

When my second son, Daniel, was born, he wasn’t breathing. He was completely grey. The umbilical cord was around his neck. There was no cry. There was no sense of anything. It was a deadly silence, a nothingness. ‘I had a not-breathing child and...

Is there anyone who doesn't fear death? Apparently so. This Easter Sunday we explore why Christians take strength from the Easter story and how it can give us hope as we face the coronavirus crisis.

I suspect more people than usual will currently be asking this question. Christians naturally turn to the Bible, yet the Bible offers no seamless answer to the problem of pain. It speaks in stories and images, and tackles this thorny issue in more wa...

If each generation has to interpret the Bible in the light of their experience, isn’t its authority lost in the psychology of those interpreting it?

My favourite verses are Matthew 9.35­–36. It says that Jesus went everywhere through the cities and villages, and he talked about the Kingdom of God and he had compassion on people, and healed all their sicknesses and diseases. If I had to describ...

‘The Parable of the Lost Son (Luke 15.11–32), for me, encapsulates the gospel. Regardless of where you're at in your faith, the message is difficult to accept because it talks about grace, which everyone struggles with a bit. For me that is the g...

‘Isaiah 61.1 says, ‘He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.’ That ties in with what I do with [debt counselling charity] Christians Against Poverty. Sometim...

When I went to boarding school aged 13, I had my first episode of depression, though I didn’t have a diagnosis then. I had a total and utter loss of perspective. I felt cut off from the present, the past and the future. Everything felt completely b...

I was 27-years-old and in the WRENS. There was a drunken sailor who was very difficult, but I thought he was a challenge, so I got to know him. He asked me to marry him. But I had the courage to say that I didn’t want to get married. He said, “If...

The day I came down with the coronavirus was a bit shocking really. I had done a set of nights at the hospital and started to feel a bit rotten. I thought it might be the cycle ride I had done. Maybe I’d overdone it. I woke up the next morning and ...

It's Father's Day on Sunday, and this week Bible Society is focusing on some biblical fathers. Some of them get it right, some don't – but they all tell us something about the challenges of fatherhood today.

I was a civil engineer: building bridges, railways and roads. My husband and I bought this house and thought we’d fill it with a family. We were going through infertility treatment. I had two early miscarriages and then a later miscarriage with our...

I worked in the City for many years. Life was brilliant on the trading floor. If you couldn’t stand pressure and didn’t have a sense of humour, it wasn’t the place to be! One lunchtime, two of my colleagues asked me to go to St Helen’s Bisho...

The verse that means the most to me is Jeremiah 29.11. It says, “For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Someone gave me that verse when my husb...

The words from Isaiah 49.13–23 gave me hope at a very, very bad time. I was in an abusive marriage. My husband just wanted to kill me. He tried smothering me when I was in bed, and if it weren’t for my daughter I think I would have gone then. My ...

‘I had a challenging upbringing. My father died when I was seven and my mother, though a believer, had a fierce temper. I did grow up with a faith of my own, but it wasn’t particularly getting deeper. Part of that was observing my mother's own li...

The passage that I go back to again and again is Luke 2.8-20, the story of the shepherds. When I was a child, everyone wanted to be an angel or Mary in the school play. But I was Herod, because I was a good reader and could say ‘diligently’! I ca...