Authors: Alydia Smith

Before the Thursday lunch program for those living without shelter, Mark and I would always have amazing, broad theological conversations about everything. No matter how much I prepped, it was never enough to engage Mark at his level. Our conversations always ended with, “Yes, but Alydia, will it stop me...

Blessings in this Easter season! Easter Sunday is now a month past. May, with its promised spring flowers, has arrived. However, in Alberta as I write this, we seem to be still in the grasp of winter. Just when we think spring is peeking through, we wake to another blast...

Hope springs eternal… At least in the kitchen, where my dad always has something growing that was never meant to survive a Canadian winter. Currently a Jamaican yam vine is climbing the wall of my kitchen, a resilient and persistent sign of hope springing in cold places! As you witness...

It’s one in the morning on Sunday, and I am practising the latest youth ministry fad—something to do with pool noodles and Bibles.… It’s like spaghetti, I remember one book saying, just throw things against the wall and see what sticks. I was willing to sacrifice the weeks of preparation...

When in congregational ministry in downtown Toronto, I made a friend from the Nation of Islam who would visit me on rainy days. At the time, I thought he was bold, brazen, and wrong to declare, in my church office, that I served a White church. I argued with him...

I once had a friend who responded to every request and idea from me with something request and idea from me with something along the lines of “Impossible! Can’t be done.” I’d say okay, and then a week later, he would casually show me that he had done the thing...