Personal Blogs

"We now live in a society that has alienated children and made them foreigners in their own home."

Are Outside Pressures Impacting on  Your Family? 

Some thoughts have been dancing in my mind lately, like the Northern Lights—elusive, but prompting me  to gather  into something meaningful. I feel the need to shape them into a human value, something worth holding onto, especially at a time when so many families seem to be quietly coming apart.

There was a time when all family members bought their clothes from the same store, shared meals together, listened to the same music and spoke the same language. Today, the younger generation shop in different places, eat alone in their rooms in front of the television and mobile phones. And, if the truth be told, they speak a language of their own. We now live in a society that has alienated children and made them foreigners in their own home. 

I have no political allegiance to any party, yet recently I watched a short podcast by Jacob Rees-Mogg titled Why I Always Read the Sun. To my surprise, I found in him a kindred spirit, for reasons I have written about before.

The discussion turned to celebrity culture and the West’s fixation on it. Godly wisdom goes without saying that private lives are nobody else’s business, yet those same lives are constantly paraded before us through newspapers, magazines and  reality television with carefully staged revelations from public-relations teams. One begins to wonder: does society need celebrities, or do celebrities need society, or are we all trapped in a rather bleak symbiosis that slowly erodes the home?

At one point, Jacob mentioned a small booklet he used to read to his children, drawn from the Ten Commandments: “Honor your father and your mother.” That struck me deeply. How often modern television and media undermines that simple command. Parents are mocked, portrayed as foolish or irrelevant. Children shout down their elders in soaps and comedies, while the younger generation is presented as the wise and morally superior voice. These images seep quietly into our living rooms and, over time, into the fabric of family life.

My wife and I are careful. We pay the TV licence mostly for the occasional travel programme, farming shows, and stories about vets. The television stays off until the day is properly finished—meal eaten, kitchen tidied, Scripture read and discussed and time in Gods presence in prayer completed. Around nine in the evening, we might watch something on catch-up. Yet even these so-called wholesome programmes have grown repetitive. Though we still read privately, we no longer read together, and I began to sense that something important was missing.

So, we changed something.

After all responsibilities are done, we now sit together and listen to a book. I have cancer, and by that time of evening my energy for printed words is gone. But listening still opens a door. In the quiet, shared act of listening, something of value was restored.

Until a month ago, I had never heard of Rob Parsons. In another life, I like to imagine him and I sitting at a quiet, metaphysical campfire with Barnabas, C.S. Lewis and a few others talking about joy, and the unusual ways we were drawn toward our Creator. We began listening to his book A Knock at the Door, and I was unprepared for its power.

There is a moment in the book when Rob faces the worst year of his life. One evening, sitting alone in the dark with his thoughts, there comes a knock at the door. He does not spell everything out, but I felt, unmistakably, the presence of the Holy Spirit in that moment. (I should say this: this is not the same knock in the theme of the book, but a secondary incident that was impactful in my listening).

Last week, I found myself low in spirit. It was one of those weeks when you almost expect a knock of your own, a compassionate email or phone call, but it never happened, but something else did.

The compassion and quiet grace I encountered in Rob’s story became that knock for me; a friend in my presence sent by God. It reminded me that brokenness is not healed by noise, distraction, or spectacle, but by attention, presence, and love.

So, what does all this have to do with families falling apart?

What stood out most in A Knock at the Door was compassion—deep, costly compassion, paired with extraordinary human kindness, the kind the Apostle Paul speaks of. And so, my suggestion is simple: gather your family. Sit together. Turn the television off. Listen to a story like this; one that nurtures humility, empathy, and tenderness and see whether something does not begin to change.

And don’t stop there. Make it a habit. From time to time, I will suggest other books worth listening to; stories that gently rebuild what constant noise and cultural distortion quietly tear down.

Sometimes the healing of a family does not arrive with grand speeches or dramatic interventions. Sometimes it comes as a simple knock at the door and a family willing to listen.

A Knock at the Door - Care for the Family

Why I always read The Sun - plus say hello to Pongo - YouTube

Postscript

My wife and I finished this book last night, and we were both left with what the Germans call Abschiedsschmerz — the sadness that comes when a book reaches its end, accompanied by the melancholy sense that no other book will ever quite be the same.

Whether we are watching a movie, reading the Bible or reading a book. We always ask each other the question at the end, “What is your takeaway?” My enduring takeaway is the phrase, “Not good enough.”

I was brought up in the slums of Govan, Glasgow, in the sixties  with  many difficulties both at home in relation to alcohol and at school where teachers saw me as not good enough; they never understood what curve balls life was throwing my way.

The odds of leaving with a good education were firmly stacked against me. Yet I went on to prove to myself that I was good enough.

Blog notebook image by Copilot

Editor’s note:
These reflections arise from personal experience and quiet observation. References to books, media, and public figures are offered simply as part of a wider reflection on family, compassion, and shared life. Scripture is quoted from the public domain. This piece is written in the hope of encouraging thoughtful conversation rather than debate or commercial publishing.

Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon : On Being Noticed

In the quiet lines of Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon, the eighth-century Chinese poet Li Bai gives voice to a loneliness that does not shout. Instead, it dulls its sorrow with wine:

Among the blossoms, a jar of wine—
I drink alone, with none beside.
I lift my cup and invite the bright moon;
facing my shadow—now three of us.

Surrounded by blossoms, wine before him, he is still alone. To ease the ache, he invites the moon and his shadow to keep him company. Even then, the companionship is fragile. When the wine fades, each goes its own way.

Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon is a short lyrical poem about the search for companionship beyond ordinary human society.

In the poem, Li Bai drinks wine alone at night, finding no human friends around him. He imaginatively invites the bright moon and his own shadow to join him, forming a symbolic trio. As he drinks and sings, the moon seems to follow him and his shadow dances beside him, creating a momentary sense of joy and freedom.

Beneath this playful surface, the poem reflects a deeper theme: human isolation and the transient nature of happiness. The moon and shadow cannot truly share his feelings, and the companionship fades as the night ends. Li Bai contrasts fleeting earthly pleasure with a longing for a more enduring, almost spiritual connection, suggesting that true harmony may lie beyond the physical world.

It is a gentle, aching picture of what many discover with age: the world grows louder, faster, less attentive, even dispassionate, while the soul grows quieter and more aware of absence and many seek solace in alcohol.

Loneliness is not new. It is not a failure of faith. It is part of the long human story.

The psalmist knew this ache well. In Psalm 71, he prays with disarming honesty, transforming loneliness into communion with God:

Do not cast me off in the time of old age;
forsake me not when my strength is spent.

This is not a prayer of bitterness, but of trust. The psalmist does not deny weakness; he brings it before God. While society may overlook the aging, God is addressed directly; because God still sees.

Li Bai looks to the moon because in his eyes no one else is there.
The psalmist looks to God because He always is.

There is deep comfort here. Human companionship may thin with time—friends pass on, voices fade, roles diminish, but divine companionship does not depend on usefulness, youth, or relevance. God does not drift away when strength scatters, as the shadow did when Li Bai danced. God remains when sobriety returns, when illusions fall away, when silence settles in.

Old age can feel like standing beneath a vast sky, speaking words that no one seems to hear. Yet Scripture reminds us that even then—especially then—our prayer rises into attentive mercy.

Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon

月下独酌

(pinyin: Yuè xià dú zhuó)

li Bai’s original poem is in the public domain, having been written in the eighth century. This English rendering of the stanza is newly translated by ChatGpt  from Chinese and is not a restricted. Check poetry websites for modern English translations.

Image by Copilot

She is in the middle of something. My mother I mean. 
The glasses—polished to within an inch of their lives—stand to attention along the table like terracotta warriors, waiting for their moment.

Bottles of every shape and promise crowd the sideboard: whisky for warmth, beer for cheer, the odd forgotten liqueur brought out only once a year. The kitchen floor smells sharply of San Izal disinfectant, that unmistakable scent of readiness, of endings properly dealt with.

     “Go and get washed and changed,” she says without looking up.
      "But it's only It’s nine o’clock."
  “There’re clean clothes on the bed,” she continues as she ignores my protest.

She says it while preparing some snacks, hands moving with the calm authority of ritual. This night matters. It always did.

Unless you come from the Baby Boomer generation or earlier, Hogmanay like this may sound like something lifted from folklore—quaint, outdated, almost imagined. But for me, those nights left deep marks. They were loud and warm and communal, shaped by customs that didn’t need explaining because everyone already knew their part.

New Year’s Eve was never casual. It was a transformation; a bid deal on Scotland’s cultural Calendar. The house was redded from top to bottom—not just cleaned, but cleansed. Out with the old year’s dust and troubles, every corner scrubbed bright to make room for what was coming. It felt as though the walls themselves were being prepared to listen.

By evening, the table would groan with generosity: thick slices of shortbread, ginger wine that bit the back of your throat, beer with heads still settling, and the whisky—always the whisky—standing quietly, confident it would be called upon.

As midnight drew close, the air grew tight with anticipation. The White Heather Club on Scottish Television was turned down less we miss the hour. Then fireworks cracked open the sky, and the ships along the Clyde sounded their horns, deep and mournful and joyful all at once. It was as if the whole city took a breath together.

First-footing followed, the knock at the door heavy with possibility. A tall, dark-haired man was luck itself, stepping over the threshold with coal and shortbread, salt and black bun, whisky tucked under his arm. He brought warmth, food, flavour, and good fortune—and the year officially began.

The Then the church bells from The Govan Gaelic Church across from us on Copeland Road.. We sang Auld Lang Syne with joined hands and damp eyes, voices untrained but sincere, carrying hope forward because that was what the song demanded.

What I miss most is the not knowing. No phones. No messages. Just the knock. It could be uncles or neighbours, cousins or friends-of-friends. Each face revealed itself only when the door opened and the light fell on them. Occasionally, it was a lonely neighbour with some excuse to be at the door only to be ushered in with a joyful glee in her eyes. She wasn’t going to spend the evening alone. Bless her.

No one was left on their own in those days. The widow down the close, the quiet old bachelor next door—everyone belonged somewhere on Hogmanay. You were claimed by the night whether you planned for it or not.

Looking back now, it’s the simplicity that aches. The closeness. The way tradition stitched people together without asking their permission. In a world that feels increasingly distant and distracted, those Hogmanay nights stand like a small, glowing hearth in memory—proof that connection once came easily, and that the turning of the year was something we faced together.

No one should be lost and lonely at any time of the year. We can change that, can’t we? May all you readers have a Happy New Year.

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Paul "thanked God and took courage.” 

Tharséō: Courage Given by Presence

What is your favourite verse I am often asked. Goodness! It's like choosing your favourite vital organ. Truth is, we need them all. But there is one that moves me for a particular reason; the love of the brotherhood.

In 2009, I was travelling home from Rome, a city layered with history and ancient stories. As the car moved toward the airport, a roadside sign caught my attention: Via Appia—the Appian Way. In that instant, my thoughts leapt back nearly two thousand years to the biblical account of the Apostle Paul.

In A.D. 58, Paul had travelled that very road—not as a visitor or pilgrim, but as a prisoner, escorted by armed guards on his way to stand trial in Rome. I imagined him walking along those stones, weary, uncertain, and facing an unknown future.

Yet something extraordinary happened on that journey. Word of Paul’s arrival reached the Christian community in Rome, and they chose not to remain at a distance. Luke, Paul’s companion, records the moment:

“The brothers and sisters there had heard that we were coming, and they travelled as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns to meet us.”

These were not nearby landmarks. The Forum of Appius lay sixty-four kilometres from Rome—a grimy stopping place the poet Horace once described as crawling with frogs, gnats, and dishonest innkeepers. The Three Taverns, only slightly closer, stood fifty-eight kilometres from the city. And yet the believers walked. Step after step, mile after mile, they came—not to change Paul’s circumstances, but to offer him their presence.

They came because they loved him. They came because he needed them.

When Paul saw them, Scripture tells us he “thanked God and took courage.” The Greek word used for “courage,” tharséō, carries a gentle and intimate meaning: to be strengthened from within, to be emboldened in a way that quiets fear and steadies the soul. Scripture does not say, but I imagine Paul giving way to tears as I did when I pondered on it. 

This scene has always moved me, not because of its historical detail or geography, but because of the depth of love it reveals. It raises a searching question for every generation: how far are we willing to walk to encourage someone who is struggling? How much inconvenience would we endure simply to stand beside a fellow believer in their hour of trial?

I can’t help but wonder—how many would walk that road today? How many would take those same steps, driven by love and faith, just to give a weary soul the courage to keep going?

Acts 28

How Then shall We Comfort Ourselves?

I am on a train, lulled by the steady rhythm of the rails. All feels settled as I read quietly, until my attention drifts to a young mother seated nearby with her two small daughters. They whisper to one another, swing their legs, exist without apparent self-consciousness. There is something quietly precious in watching them—innocence still intact, trust not yet tested.

At the next stop, a bunch of folk come on  board the carriage. Their voices are loud, their laughter unguarded, their language coarse. I find myself wincing slightly. Not because they are extraordinary, but because they are not. Nothing here would make the news; nothing rises to the level of alarm. And yet, the atmosphere subtly shifts.

I notice the mother’s posture change almost imperceptibly, a small, instinctive response. I wonder what thoughts pass through her mind about the world her daughters are growing into. I imagine she asks herself that question often. I know I do, when I think of my grandchildren. The thought unsettles me, and with it comes an uncomfortable self-awareness—an embarrassment that I recognise these men as familiar, a sense that they reflect something ordinary in our culture.

Social change rarely announces itself in clear or cinematic ways. More often, it arrives gradually: edges soften, manners evolve, assumptions shift. Courtesy, once expected, can become optional without anyone deciding it should be so. Larger questions about truth, responsibility, and meaning don’t vanish overnight; they are slowly renegotiated in ordinary moments like these.

I hesitate to say society is in moral freefall. That language can obscure as much as it reveals. It may be more accurate to say that we are living through a prolonged period of disorientation—like being on a fairground ride that began with excitement but now spins longer than expected. Some enjoy the motion, some endure it, some feel uneasy but unsure how to step away.

The difficulty is not that no one notices the movement, but that noticing alone doesn’t tell us what to do next.

The following morning, I wake early. The house is still, and migrating geese call out against the dark sky. Their movement seems purposeful, instinct intact. I prepare for my daily Bible reading, drawn to the quiet, longing for something steady. The previous day lingers in my mind, unresolved. Before opening the pages, I pray—not with confidence or eloquence, but simply for clarity, for grounding, for truth that doesn’t bend with every shift in the noise around me.

I turn to Isaiah, chapter one.

As I read, questions surface—not abstract, but personal. Can patterns of moral confusion repeat across generations? Can a society believe itself to be progressing while unknowingly revisiting old failures in new forms? Can people be informed, expressive, even religious, and yet inwardly exhausted?

Isaiah addresses a culture rich in ritual yet struggling with conscience, articulate in self-defence but resistant to correction. The resemblance feels uncomfortably familiar. Yet woven through the warning is something else: an invitation. Not to despair, not to retreat into nostalgia, but to return—to choose attentiveness, humility, and responsibility anew, even after long seasons of drift.

I close the book slowly.

And I am left wondering—not how far the ride might go, but whether individuals, quietly and inwardly, might still decide to step off…

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O Holy Night: Hope For a Tired World

You would need to have lived in a cave not to have heard O Holy Night these past few weeks. It seeps into December everywhere—through radios, supermarket speakers, and half-open church doors—moving like a gentle air: uninvited, but welcome; familiar rather than demanding. Often, we don’t listen closely. It plays while we shop and drive, while our minds drift toward the ordinary and the heavy. I’ve heard it all my life, and much of it tells a story I already know.

“O holy night! The stars are brightly shining…
Long lay the world in sin and error pining.”

A tired world. A waiting world. None of that surprises me.

But then comes the line that always stops me, as though a loving hand has been placed quietly on my shoulder:

“Till He appeared, and the soul felt its worth.”

That is the moment when appreciation gives way to feeling—when the song no longer plays in the background and I stop half-listening. There are times in life when we feel the ache of being less than we should be. Some people carry that ache for years. Some carry it so quietly that even those closest to them never see it.

Yesterday, my wife and I visited Glasgow, including the carnival at Glasgow Green. It carried me back to childhood in Govan: hard winters, cold streets, dark tenement closes. Winter could feel unforgiving then. But every year the lorries would roll into town, and with them the circus, clowns, elephants and the carnival at the Kelvin Hall. They arrived like sunlight breaking into the gloom. For us Glasgow children, it mattered more than we could ever explain.

On the walk back, we met a man sitting alone and asked what he was doing that day. He told us he’d been to the Scottish Exhibition Centre for the carnival. “But it had no ghost train,” he added quickly. Then, with sudden urgency, he asked, “Did yours have a ghost train?”

As we spoke, I realised he had learning difficulties. The question returned again and again, unchanged. And in that repetition, I sensed something fragile and like us all, desiring connection.

I found myself wondering, unsteadily, about his sense of worth. About how often he might be overlooked. We told him we were Christians, though he never quite grasped what we meant. “I’ll need to go to the ghost train at Glasgow Green,” he said, returning to the one thing that mattered. He was kind, loving and he shook both our hands on departing. Afterwards, I said to my wife, “We should have taken him for a coffee and some snacks.” She agreed. But the owl of Minerva flies at dusk as the saying goes. Wisdom takes flight only after the day is nearly over.

“Till He appeared, and the soul felt its worth.” The song proclaims.

Christ did not die selectively. He died for every human being. There is no stronger declaration of worth than that. The thought unsettles me, and still does. But this much I know: a soul remembering its worth is no small thing.

People will devalue you. As the years pass, it becomes easier to be overlooked, bullied, slandered, undermined and so on. Some are avoided for their differences; others simply fade because the world is in a hurry. Modern life persuades us that we don’t have time for one another. But God never rushes past a dear soul.

And now, returning to the song. Without warning, the song changes tone. It stops describing and starts commanding:

“Fall on your knees!”

It lands suddenly. Personally. There is no easing into it.

This is not a gentle invitation. It does not ask if I am ready. It assumes something about me—that I am standing when I should be kneeling. Not physically, but inwardly. It is a call to honesty, to recognition of need.

The music understands this. That line stretches the singer to the edge of breath, asking for more than feels comfortable or safe. As I listen, my body responds before my thoughts do. My chest tightens. My eyes sting. Something in me recognises the truth being spoken.

This isn’t reverence in a polished sense; it is exposure. The song does not ask me to admire the stars or contemplate theology from a distance. It speaks as though it knows me—knows how much I am holding, how long I have been standing, how practiced I am at not collapsing.

Four words, and standing begins to feel like pretence.

What moves me most is this: kneeling comes after worth, not before. The song insists that I am seen first—named first, valued first. Only then does it call me to my knees. Not because I am small, but because I no longer need to prove that I am strong.

It is about honesty.

Kneeling is what happens when defences fail—A weary world does not need clever words.
It needs permission to yield.

For God expressed His love for the world in this way:

He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him

will not face everlasting destruction,

but will have everlasting life.

John 3:16 (The Voice).

O Holy Night: The Story

“O Holy Night” began far from concert halls in 1847, in the small French town of Roquemaure. A local priest commissioned a poem to celebrate the repair of the church organ, and a townsman—poet and wine merchant Placide Cappeau—wrote it while traveling by carriage. Titled “Minuit, chrétiens,” the poem reflected on Christ’s birth as hope for a weary, longing world.

Cappeau later asked composer Adolphe Adam to set the words to music. Adam’s melody was tender and dramatic, perfectly matching the poem’s weight. The carol debuted on Christmas Eve at midnight Mass and moved listeners immediately.

Its path was not smooth. Church authorities later rejected the song because of its creators—Cappeau had distanced himself from the church, and Adam was Jewish. Still, people kept singing it, and affection carried it forward where approval did not.

Translated into English in 1855, the carol found new meaning in America. The line “Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother” resonated deeply with abolitionists, proclaiming that Christ’s birth demanded justice and human dignity.

A final story—part history, part legend—comes from the Franco-Prussian War, when a soldier’s singing on Christmas Eve reportedly brought a brief ceasefire. For a moment, the song spoke louder than weapons.

The carol endures because it does not deny weariness or suffering. Instead, it insists that hope enters the world quietly, through humility and love—a truth that still finds its way into tired and longing hearts each year.

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A Reflection on Proverbs 17:9

“Those who forgive faults foster love,
    but those who repeatedly recall them ruin relationships.”
— Proverbs 17:9 (Voice).

Claude Frollo, the tragic villain in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, is a deeply paradoxical character in the novel. He stands out as vocal in condemning others for their faults while excusing his own heinous actions as fate, divine will, or irresistible temptation and he justifies sin rather than submitting his heart to mercy.

This proverb above invites us to examine not only our words, but the posture of heart behind them. It places two ways of living side by side. One chooses mercy and moves toward love. The other continually exposes another’s wrongs and, over time, creates separation. Without accusation or exaggeration, Scripture speaks plainly: love flourishes where compassion is practiced, and relationships fracture where failures are endlessly rehearsed.

There is a quiet loneliness that often settles into a life shaped by constant fault-finding. At first, it can feel like honesty, discernment, or even responsibility. Yet over time, walls rise where bridges were meant to stand. When our attention remains fixed on what is wrong, the heart learns to stay guarded. Distance begins to feel like wisdom. Relationships remain shallow—not because people lack depth, but because intimacy requires mercy, and mercy always carries the risk of a softened heart.

I knew someone many years ago who lived within this pattern. Gradually, friends and family began to withdraw; not out of malice, but self-preservation. The loneliness that followed was numbed with alcohol. It was a sobering reminder that unresolved judgment does not remain contained; it spills outward, shaping lives and outcomes detrimentally. 

Proverbs 17:9 does not ask us to ignore harm or deny truth. Rather, it calls us to choose love in how we handle truth. Covering an offense does not mean pretending it never happened; it means refusing to let it define the relationship. It allows mercy to have the final word. In doing so, we discover that mercy does not weaken us—it reconnects us. It restores closeness, renews wonder, and opens the heart to a deeper, steadier peace.

Reflection:
Where might you be repeating a matter that love is asking you to release?

Prayer:
God, teach me the wisdom of mercy. Help me to speak and remember in ways that heal rather than divide. Give me the courage to surrender judgment for grace, and lead me into the peace that love makes possible. Amen.

The Voice (VOICE)

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.

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Our Shared Cosmos

This winter morning in Scotland is cold and unforgiving in this deep quiet of darkness; I noticed the crescent moon. It was sharp and bold in its fullness of light; faithful to this winter day. In that narrow curve was a reminder that light does not disappear when it diminishes—it waits.

What stirred gratitude was knowing that this was the same moon seen across Europe. People in France, Germany, Spain, and Norway were under the same phase, even if they saw it at contrasting times, from different angles, or not at all because of cloud or shadow. The moon did not change; only our vantage did.

There is something spiritual in that constancy. We are separate, bounded by place and circumstance, yet quietly connected. I thought of Norwegian children heading to school and collecting a skolerboller on the way and rapped in layers against the cold. I thought  of Icelandic farmers waking to frost-laden fields and wondering about their career choice. And there is the poets in Ireland finding, in that thin light, a line worth keeping. None of us marked the moment together, yet we shared it all the same.

In a mysterious world, the crescent moon offers a grand answer. That in the Creator’s eternal purpose we are reminded of his presence. And sometimes, that shared, unnoticed presence is reason enough to give thanks.

“Of all tyrannies, that of the majority is the worst.

The real danger is the gradual acceptance of evil.”

C. S. Lewis

Toys Dressed in Darkness

I know I return to this subject now and again, but at this time of year my unease returns with force. My wife said as I dropped her off to work, "Pick up a few platters to take with us tomorow evening." So, as I iwalked through the supermarket, I found myself pausing—not over prices or products, but over a display of children’s toys. There, among what should have been symbols of joy and imagination, were skulls, hollow-eyed figures, and characters edging towards evil in their posture.  I remember thinking: why are these  here, and why is it meant for children?

Once noticed, the images lodged themselves in my mind and became impossible to ignore. They are no longer confined to a single toy rack or seasonal novelty. Children’s books, cartoons, and video games increasingly feature skeletons, occult-looking figures, and skeletal creatures resembling the walking dead. They stare out from glossy covers and glowing screens, stripped of context and presented as harmless fun. Yet something about them feels profoundly wrong.

I find myself asking why we, as adults, so readily place such imagery into the hands of children. Childhood is a time of trust, curiosity, and moral formation—a period when the imagination is especially open and unguarded.

There is a story about two young fish who meet an older fish. The older fish asks, “How’s the water?” After swimming on, one of the younger fish turns to the other and asks, “What’s water?”
And so it is with socialisation. What surrounds us becomes invisible. What we introduce in these early years quietly shapes a child’s sense of what is normal, acceptable, and even desirable—often without notice or question. When skulls and symbols of death are turned into toys, darkness is no longer something to be approached with caution; it becomes something to be played with.

Some will say I am overthinking it. They will argue that children understand the difference between fantasy and reality. But I am not convinced it is that simple. Repetition has power. What is constantly seen loses its shock. What loses its shock soon loses its moral weight. When sinister imagery becomes familiar, it stops troubling the conscience.

Standing in those aisles, I cannot help but wonder whether our fascination with the macabre reveals something deeper about our culture. Why are we so drawn to what is dark, grotesque, and unsettling? Why does evil—or at least the appearance of it—sell so well?

Scripture gives language to the unease I feel but struggle to articulate. In Ephesians 6:12 we are reminded that our struggle is not merely with visible forces, but with powers of darkness that operate beyond human sight:
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world’s darkness…”

This verse does not invite paranoia, but a sober, pragmatic awareness. Evil rarely announces itself loudly. More often it enters quietly—softened, disguised, and normalised.

I find myself wondering whether such influences are at work when darkness is packaged as entertainment for the young. Why else would we be so eager to dress death in bright colours and market it as play? If there are forces that benefit from moral confusion and spiritual dullness, then turning sinister imagery into something cute and collectible makes a troubling kind of sense.

This is not a call to ban imagination or deny children adventure. There is a vital difference between storytelling that acknowledges darkness and an industry that glamorises it. Children can learn courage, goodness, and hope without being steeped in images that empty death of its seriousness and evil of its consequence.

What troubles me most is not a single toy or book, but the quiet acceptance of it all. No one seems to question it anymore—and perhaps that is the greatest concern of all. When darkness no longer shocks us, we stop guarding against it.

As I leave the supermarket and carry on with my day, the images stay with me. They raise a question I cannot easily dismiss: if we do not protect the hearts and imaginations of our children, who will? And if we fail to notice what is shaping them, what kind of world are we silently preparing them to inherit?

A Letter to the Grandchildren

By the time you are grown, your grandad may have quietly closed his eyes. My blood pressure rises more easily now, my legs weaken, and at tall heights I tremble. Cells in my body that have served me faithfully have created a rebellion and delivered cancer to my vital organs. Sometimes I open the fridge and forget why I am there. So, before the inevitable comes, allow me to leave you a few pieces of grandfatherly advice, offered with love. 

Be kind to small and living things. Don't cut up  worms or swat wasps and bees, or catch butterfies—they need our care more than we realise. Without them, life and beauty would quietly disappear. Without them, Wordsworth may never have written Daffodils, Jack might never have climbed a beanstalk, and Matsuo Bashō may have followed his father’s path, wielding death with a samurai sword rather than bringing pleasure to many with poetry.

Worms return what has died back into the soil, feeding trees, flowers, and fields in a grand, mysterious dance of death and renewal. Wasps and bees labour hour after hour, pollinating plants and flowers, bringing nourishment and beauty to the human family. Think of these small workhorses the next time you see a rainbow eucalyptus or a bleeding-heart flower. Let them remind you that even the smallest lives matter, and that usefulness often wears humble clothing.

You are being born into a strange and difficult world. There is much good in it—but also much evil. Be careful with internet sites that mislead you, stir anger, or trade in lies. Rage is profitable now, and truth is often buried beneath noise. People, too, can be deceitful. Everyone has an agenda, even those close to you. Learn to pause, to question, and to think clearly. Wisdom rarely shouts; it usually whispers.

Do not confuse popularity with goodness, or confidence with truth. Many people speak loudly and know extraordinarily little. Some of the wisest souls you will meet speak softly and listen well.

Put your trust in God and follow Jesus—He will show you the way. The world will offer you countless paths, many of them attractive, many of them destructive. Christ’s path is narrow, but it leads to life. Read God’s Word daily. Begin with the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts. Take careful note of Matthew chapters five to seven; this is where Jesus gives us guides for life. Seek Him honestly. If you reach out for Him, even clumsily, He will be there.

Guard your heart. C.S. Lewis wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience and shouts to us in our pains.” So listen for the whispers. People wander through life seeking pleasure in materialism and self-fulfilment and then wonder why God has not come into their life. Often it is because they never listen. When you read the Bible in your own private space, that is when you hear the whispers and know God is there. Go against your conscience and you will soon learn what it means for God to shout through pain. I have broken my femur, had part of a metal drainpipe embedded in my skull, and had a tooth removed without anaesthetic—but nothing is more painful than disappointing God by ignoring the conscience.

Be careful what you allow into your mind, because what you dwell on quietly shapes who you become. Avoid the traps of pornography,  and pleasures that promise freedom but slowly enslave. Discipline may feel old-fashioned, but it is one of love’s strongest forms. Just ask those who have followed such pathways.

Learn to suffer well. You will lose people you love. Dreams will fail. Your heart will break. Do not let suffering make you cruel or hard. Let it deepen you. Pain can either shrink the soul or enlarge it. Choose enlargement.

Read the books. They teach us how to be human.

Read stories that show courage, sacrifice, and redemption. Read poetry—it will teach you how to see. Read the old books; they have outlived centuries for a reason. Shakespeare will teach you about ambition, jealousy, mercy, and grace. Dostoevsky will wrestle with evil and faith. Austen will show you pride and humility. Dickens will awaken your compassion for the poor. J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls will teach you how your decisions can have deep impact on others. The Psalms will give words to your grief and joy when your own words fail.

Books train the moral imagination. They remind us that human beings are not problems to be solved, but mysteries to be loved.

Take time for silence. The world is loud and impatient, but God often speaks in stillness. Walk outside. Look at the sky. Pay attention. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

Be grateful. Gratitude guards the soul against bitterness. Say thank you often—to God, to others and tell those deserving that you appreciate them. 

Finally, remember this: you are deeply loved. Not because of what you achieve, earn, or impress others with—but because you exist, and do so in God’s image. You were known before you were born. You matter more than you will ever fully understand.

And in God’s grand purpose of paradise, we will meet if we are all faithful. As God’s word says: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”

Image by Copilot

If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain

Emily Dickinson 1886

Forgive my indulgence in sharing one of my favourite poems, but the poem acts as a apt epigraph for what I am writing  There is a quiet terror in realizing how far the sacred sometimes feels from ordinary life. We build temples and churches—structures meant to summon heaven to earth—yet the ache of existence still greets us in kitchens, hospital rooms, alleyways, and crowded sidewalks. Faith, for many, becomes a pilgrimage always postponed, a distance always just out of reach.

Emily Dickinson does something radical in seven short lines: she collapses that distance. No sanctuary is named. No ritual is required. The measure of a life is reduced to a single trembling question—Did you ease one pain? Did you stop one heart from breaking? Meaning is no longer hidden in grandeur. It is hidden in mercy.

This is not sentimental comfort. It is existential realism. The world does not wait for our theology to mature. Pain arrives before certainty. Hunger speaks louder than doctrine. Loneliness outpaces liturgy. And Dickinson dares to suggest that a life need not solve the mystery of the universe to be meaningful—it need only lessen suffering somewhere along the way.

Christianity, at its most dangerous and beautiful, agrees.

The Book of Acts describes a community that treated property as temporary and people as eternal. Believers sold what they owned and laid the proceeds at the apostles’ feet—not for spectacle, not for piety—but so that “there were no needy persons among them” (Acts 4:35). This is not polite charity. It is economic rebellion driven by love. It is the renunciation of security for the sake of solidarity. It is faith made visible and therefore vulnerable.

This thread runs far deeper into Scripture. In Exodus, God’s voice thunders not on behalf of kings or institutions but for widows and orphans:

“You shall not take advantage of any widow

or fatherless child.

If you take advantage of them at all,

and they cry at all to me…”

These words struck me with a profound poignancy when I left the supermarket tonight and had a few words with a family from Syria, a mother and two children and I wondered about their missing father. God leans forward at the sound of suffering. A God's compassion over broken people.

Philosophically, this confronts us with a frightening truth: meaning is not something we merely believe—it is something we enact. Faith that remains internal is indistinguishable from illusion. The early Christians understood this with terrifying clarity. To follow Christ was not primarily to agree with a creed, but to reorder one’s life around the vulnerable.

Even now, this ancient moral gravity still bends history. We see it in churches that run food banks for those trapped in addiction and poverty. In Christian medical missions that enter forgotten places where profit would never go. In orphanages, shelters, prison ministries, soup kitchens, and in the quiet acts of mercy that never make headlines. These are not accessories to the gospel. They are its spine.

And yet, we must confess the other truth: religion often feels far away. The church too entangled. The institution too slow. The language too abstract. For many, faith has become conceptual while suffering remains brutally concrete. Dogma can feel louder than compassion. Moral certainty can feel colder than love.

This is why Dickinson’s poem still burns. When the sacred feels inaccessible, holiness becomes portable. It must travel light. It must take the form of a cooled pain, a mended heart, a small rescue that no one else applauds. A single life steadied. A single burden lifted. A single trembling soul helped back to its nest.

Jesus himself lived this answer. He did not build institutions; he disrupted them. He healed outside sanctioned spaces. He touched what was declared unclean. The sacred, in his life, was never confined. It spilled into streets, homes, and sickrooms. It moved wherever pain lived.

This gives faith its unbearable weight. If God is found among the broken, then indifference becomes blasphemy. To ignore the suffering neighbour is not merely a social failure—it is a theological one. As Christ himself said, what we do to “the least of these,” we do to him.

This is why the Epistle of James sounds almost violent in its honesty:

If a brother or sister lacks food and clothing,
and we offer only words without action,
what kind of faith is that?

The answer is uncomfortably clear. It is dead.

So, we should be careful when someone claims the name “Christian.” The test is not vocabulary but visibility. Not how loudly faith is confessed, but how tangibly it is lived. Not what we believe about God, but what our neighbour experiences because of us.

In the end, the most authentic act of worship available to us is not only performed in rows of pews or beneath vaulted ceilings. Maybe it is performed on sidewalks, in shelters, in hospital wards, in kitchens where the last loaf of bread is broken in half.

"For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will,

 but because of the One who subjected it, in hope

Romans 8:20 (BSB).

Once Upon a Time, There Was a Man From the Land of Uz.

“Once upon a time, there was a man from the land of Uz.” With an opening like that, you already sense you are in for a good ride.

The story of Job doesn’t just begin with suffering—it begins with mystery, depth, and a kind of ancient holiness that still feels startling today. It raises the question, can a person be faithful to God despite suffering? 

One question has always stayed with me: How did Job know so much about God? He lived long before Scripture was written as we know it. Yet the Bible calls him “blameless and upright” (Job 1:1)—a man who feared God, rejected evil, and clung to his integrity even when everything was stripped away. Where did that kind of faith come from?

Job likely lived during the age of the patriarchs, when God’s truth travelled by word of mouth instead of printed page. Long before the Law was given, stories of creation, the flood, and God’s dealings with humanity would have been told around fires and passed through generations. Perhaps Job heard of Adam and the fall, of Noah and the ark, maybe even whispers of Abraham and his covenant. Scripture doesn’t connect their lives directly—but it’s compelling to imagine that news of God’s promises moved farther and wider than we often realize.

Still, Job’s knowledge of God feels deeper than second-hand tradition. When he speaks, his words carry the weight of personal encounter. This is not borrowed faith—it is lived faith. I imagine Job gazing into the same night sky we see today, sensing that the stars themselves declared the glory of a Creator far greater than human understanding. Romans 1:20 tells us that God’s invisible qualities are clearly seen in what He has made. I believe Job saw that clearly too.

There’s another thought I keep returning to: what if God revealed Himself to Job in ways that were never recorded for us? Scripture hints at others—like Melchizedek—who served the one true God outside Abraham’s family line. Job may have belonged to a quiet, faithful remnant who walked with God simply because they sought Him. Even without written commandments, Job somehow knew what righteousness looked like. That alone is humbling.

Yet what makes Job’s faith so powerful is not just its depth—it’s how practical it was. This wasn’t an abstract belief system. Job rose early to offer sacrifices for his children, just in case their hearts had wandered. He understood sin, intercession, and the seriousness of standing before a holy God. How did he know to do that? Perhaps his awareness didn’t come from rules, but from reverence.

And then, of course, there is the suffering.

If faith is ever tested, it is tested in pain. Job lost everything, his children, his wealth, his health, and eventually even the support of those closest to him. He asked the hardest questions any human can ask. He grieved, he protested, he trembled before God. And yet, somehow, he never severed the relationship. “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him” (Job 13:15). Those words could only come from someone who truly knew God, not just as an idea, but as a presence.

Job’s suffering didn’t destroy his faith; it refined it. It stripped away easy answers and forced him to cling to God alone. And in the end, when God finally spoke, Job didn’t receive explanations. He received revelation. That was enough.

When I step back and look at Job’s life, I can’t help but think about how much we’ve been given today. We have the full story of Scripture, centuries of teaching, and the living example of Jesus Christ. And still, Job’s faith sometimes feels stronger than ours. His trust was built with fewer tools—and yet it stood firm under unimaginable pressure.

His life asks a piercing question: Do I truly know God, or do I simply know about Him?

Job reminds us that God has always been making Himself known—through creation, conscience, suffering, and divine encounter. Written Scripture is a priceless gift, but it was never the only way God spoke. Job found God because he sought Him with everything he had.

His story still whispers to us today:
Seek. Trust. Hold fast.
The God who met Job in the land of Uz is the same God who meets us now.