FRESH Official Podcast

I think it's pretty true for all of us that there never seems to be a time in our lives when there's not something going on that we'd rather not have going on. It's true, isn't it? There always seems to be something! Now, that "something" can be a combination of small niggling things, or perhaps it's one or two really big things. And even if at the moment everything seems to be just peachy … we bo...

I don't know about you, but I don't like to suffer.  Hey, I don't even like being moderately inconvenienced or uncomfortable. How about you? You know what it's like when you're freezing cold. You don't want to stay that way. In fact, all you can think about is getting warm. And when you're hot and sweaty, all you want is some cool air and a cold drink. For some people, that's merely a matter of co...

It's not at all uncommon to feel, in a sense, untethered in life – as though you're not where you're meant to be. Something's not quite right but it's this surreal feeling of displacement. Have you ever felt that? According to the United Nations' refugee agency, UNHCR, there are 44 million refugees in the world today. And that's just part of a broader displacement crisis, with over 122 million peo...

Ideally, life would be fair. Good people would be rewarded for doing good. Bad people would be punished for doing bad. All would be as it should be and that would be that. But … public service announcement!! … life ain't always fair.   489 years ago today, William Tyndale was executed for translating the Bible from Latin into English, which was seen by the religious hierarchy as a challenge to the...

I hope you'll forgive me for asking you a rather direct question today, but … how generous are you? No, really … how much of what you have and who you are do you give away? 19th century Scottish industrialist Andrew Carnegie rose from poverty to become one of the richest men in the world. He believed that the wealthy had a moral responsibility to distribute their wealth for the greater good. Putti...

Years ago, women had no rights. They were mere chattels tethered to their father and then to their husband. Happily, there have been great advances in women's rights, with hopefully more to come. And yet, I wonder sometimes whether in some ways, we've not quite hit the mark. Should a woman have the same opportunities as a man? Absolutely. Should she get equal pay for equal work? Totally. So let's...

Families, the world over, are falling apart. Sure, there are vibrant families too. But increasingly, with the invasion of technology and all that that brings into the home, with the rise of a 'me-centred' take on life, it's little wonder that both the extended and the nuclear family are under siege. A major contributing factor without doubt is that many men have, for one reason or another, lost th...

The relationship between work and rest is an interesting one. Many work so hard that it drives them into the ground. Others suffer from too little "work" and too much rest, driving them to boredom and loneliness. Wherever you are on that continuum, striking a happy medium isn't always easy. When we're young and working hard, satisfying though that may be, we're hoping that at some point, it's goin...

None of us likes to be stretched – at least, not too much. We don't mind a bit of physical, intellectual or emotional stretching, if I can call it that … but not to the point of discomfort. I guess that's why most people, most of the time, go for the easy option. I was reading an interesting article recently about cognitive decline. The learned professor was saying that around age sixty, people ge...

One of the saddest of all human conditions is complacency. Each of us is filled with so much potential – different though we all are. But complacency has this nasty habit of robbing us of our potential. Who wants to get to the end of their life wondering … what could have been? Richard Branson is a household name: An entrepreneur extraordinaire, an adventurer and, by all accounts, a pretty decent...

It's a paradox of human relationships that, on the one hand, we yearn for closeness, for love, for intimacy … and yet the closer we are to someone, the more their weaknesses can drive us completely around the twist. Why is that? Napoleon and Josephine loved one another deeply. But despite their love, his controlling nature and her inability to meet his expectations led to serious conflict and ulti...

Do miracles still happen? I mean, when was the last time you experienced something so out of the ordinary, so extraordinary, that you couldn't call it anything else? Or do some people just have an overactive imagination, using "miracle" to describe something that was just a coincidence?  Personally I haven't seen anyone grow a new limb where one had been amputated. Nor have I seen a glass eye in s...

Each one of us, at some point – at many points, in fact – faces turmoil in our lives. Things don't turn out how we'd planned. Or out of the blue, they take a sharp turn for the worse. Not nice, is it? Over the last few days we've been chatting about finding ourselves amidst turmoil, and if I can sum things up it would go something like this: Stuff happens. Worry and fear well up inside. But in the...

Have you ever found yourself hard-pressed – between a rock and a hard place, as some people would say –  waiting on a breakthrough … waiting, waiting, waiting? Will that breakthrough break through in time, or will everything fall apart? I'm sure you've been there more than once, as have I. And when things are teetering on the brink, it can seriously make you question God's timing. In August 1776,...

One of the worst things that can ever happen in life is to be abandoned by those who should have been there for you. There are countless people in this world who were abandoned by their parents. And so many who've been abandoned by their soul-mate who's headed off to greener pastures. Abandonment is a terrible thing. You can even be surrounded by apparently well-meaning people and still feel compl...

When you think about it, it's really quite natural for us to worry about things. So much of the important stuff of life is out of our control, so when that one "thing" which can have a huge impact hangs precariously in the balance, we worry. I wonder, what are you worried about at the moment? A health outcome, finances, kids … any number of things, right? Sometimes we even find ourselves worrying...

I'm sure you've met really smart people along the way. Me too. They just leave us in the dust with their brilliance, right? Some are academically gifted. Others seem to have a level of emotional intelligence, of wisdom, that you and I could surely never attain. But it doesn't matter how smart or emotionally intelligent or wise we may be … we're all confronted by circumstances in life that are so c...

I think we've all been in that place where we've thought to ourselves, "Well, I'm nothing special. I don't have any particular skills that make me stand out from the crowd. I'm pretty sure my life will never amount to much." Been there, done that, got the t-shirt! Srinivasa Ramanujan was born into humble circumstances in India in 1887. His father was a clerk in a sari shop, his mother kept house....

Imagine being given a gift by someone whom you'd hurt, by someone you'd rejected, by someone from whom you deserved anything but a present. That'd be a turn up for the books, wouldn't it? The world generally doesn't work that way. Normally, you get your just desserts. People will turn against you for even the slightest perceived failure – let alone how quickly they'll drop you if you seriously mis...

I'm pretty sure there's not a one of us who hasn't been at the bottom of a hole that we've dug for ourselves; a disaster of our own making. In some cases, we're able to get ourselves out of it. In others … well, not so much. Over the last few days we've seen that that phenomenon is as old as time itself, with Adam and Eve disobeying God in the Garden of Eden by eating a piece of forbidden fruit an...

Making enemies is never a good idea. No matter how miffed you may be at someone for how they treated you, it's invariably not worth burning bridges over –  and yet we've all done it … trashed relationships that could have been saved. Over the last couple of days we've been chatting about the terrible consequences of making an enemy of God … not because I mean to paint Him as a cosmic grouch with a...

Something that I've never understood is why people turn to a life of crime when the consequences, if they're caught, are imprisonment and in some places, much worse. Do you get it? I don't. The financial turnover of organised crime globally is estimated to be over $2 trillion US dollars a year. The Globalised Organised Crime Index recently reported that 83% of the world's population lives in areas...

Whilst fear is a normal human emotion – a critical protection mechanism in a life-and-death situation – the sort of fear that comes from having done the wrong thing and knowing that the consequences are headed your way … well, that's the sort of fear you want to avoid, right? Have you ever been picked up by the police for speeding? I remember years ago when it happened to me seeing the flashing li...

Self-awareness is so vitally important in keeping ourselves safe; in stopping ourselves from making the same mistakes over and over again; in protecting ourselves both from ourselves and from those who would do us harm, wouldn't you agree? The problem is, we all have blind spots when it comes to those temptations that repeatedly lead us astray. What are your weak spots – the temptations most likel...

None of us likes to be misled, duped, scammed. It's awful, isn't it? Yet, according to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, last year scammers stole over one trillion US dollars globally from ordinary people like you and me. Now, if you're struggling to wrap your mind around that number – one trillion dollars – perhaps this'll help. If you were to count to one trillion, one second at a time – one, two,...