Joan’s Blog

This week, as we observed Youth Day in South Africa, I asked myself the question: what kind of world will we bequeath to our children? The world we leave

How are we to respond to the loss, sorrow and grief that swirls around us right now? I’ll be honest, I have often tried to shut out grief. When

Bless you, we say as someone sneezes. God bless, we hurriedly scrawl on a birthday card. Blessings, we sometimes breezily sign off an email to a friend. In my

Our world has been plagued by the Covid-19 virus for 5 months, and my country South Africa has been in lockdown for 2 of those. It’s a time where

What can be better than a good book when one is stuck at home, right? Wrong – it seems it’s not quite that simple. In our last book club

Her children arise and call her blessed. (Proverbs 31:28) I had all but forgotten that Sunday is Mother’s Day. Lockdown restriction, news of the pandemic, worries about the economy…

One day in the distant future I will be napping in a chair, book on my lap and reading glasses perched at the tip of my nose. One of

How are you really feeling in your lockdown life? In the three weeks since lockdown started, we’ve all done our best to ‘look on the

I scramble up the steep path, my heart hammering wildly, a knot of fear tightening my throat. This can’t be happening. It can’t be! Ahead of

(Article written for Scripture Union,  April 2020) How do we stay joyful during lockdown? Is it even right to feel joy when the Corona virus has brought such devastation,