Personal Blogs

I sat in that sterile room and heard the doctor say “cancer,” 

A Year to Live — and a Psalm to Hold on To

In September 2023, I was given a year to live.

Neuroendocrine cancer, which began quietly in the prostate, had spread its wings and made itself at home in my pancreas and liver. The words came gently from the doctor, but they shook the earth beneath me. How do you take news like that? There’s no script for it.

And yet… God had already written one.

The morning, I was due to receive my results, something extraordinary happened. Before I stepped into the hospital — before the diagnosis had a name or a timeline — God spoke to me through words I hadn’t sought, but that found me like a lifeline dropped into deep waters.

It was Psalm 91:1–2:

"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.’"

I didn’t read those words casually. They were spoken into my spirit — not just read, but revealed. It was as if God said, “This is for you. For today. For what you’re about to hear.”

And He didn’t stop there.

Later that evening, my wife — who has walked every step of this with me — pointed out something I had overlooked. She had been reading the same Psalm, but her eyes were drawn to the closing verses:

“Because he loves Me, I will deliver him;
because he knows My name, I will protect him.
When he calls out to Me, I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble.
I will deliver him and honor him.
With long life I will satisfy him
and show him My salvation.” — Psalm 91:14–16

In her quiet way, she saw what I needed. God was not just speaking to me about protection — He was promising presence. Not just shelter, but companionship in trouble. Not just deliverance, but honor. And most tenderly of all, long life — whether in days or eternity — and salvation.

To anyone who is suffering, to anyone who has sat in that sterile room and heard the doctor say “cancer,” or who lies awake wondering what the future holds: I want you to know that God still speaks. And more than that — He stays.

Psalm 91 doesn't promise the absence of pain. It promises His presence in it. It promises that when we love Him, when we call on Him, He hears. He answers. He walks with us.

I may have been given a year, but I have been given far more — I have been given hope. Not wishful thinking, but anchored hope. And I want to pass that on to you.

Because you are not alone.

He is with you.

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“Other people are never the problem, although blaming them for your own misery is.”

— Jordan Peterson

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 Beyond Blame: How Young Men Grow Up

There’s a stage in many young men’s lives when the world feels unfair, and somewhere in that tangle of frustration and identity, they turn their eyes back, to childhood, to family, to the parents who raised them, and ask, “Is this their fault?”

It’s an understandable question. For many, the early years weren’t easy. Some fathers were distant or demanding, some mothers overwhelmed or emotionally unreachable. Some homes were fraught with silence, others with shouting. When life in adulthood becomes difficult, when relationships break down, ambition falters, or confidence thins. It's easy to trace the outline of those early years and see failure stamped on every corner. And easier still to assign blame rather than seeing your own faults and failures.

Jordan Peterson has spoken directly to this kind of thinking, particularly among young men who feel unmoored. In one of his many talks, he delivers it plainly: “Other people are never the problem, although blaming them for your own misery is.” It's not that he denies trauma or downplays pain. His point is sharper: staying in the blame keeps you stuck. It puts your life’s steering wheel in someone else’s hands.

That hits a nerve. Because the truth is, blaming your parents feels like doing something—but it achieves nothing. It’s a way to hold the past accountable while avoiding the difficult work of changing the present.

Peterson’s message here isn’t cruel. It’s a call to agency. You may not be responsible for what happened to you, but you are responsible for what happens next. That distinction is everything.

There’s a point when a man has to make peace with his past—not by approving it, but by refusing to be ruled by it. Some never get there. They become experts in pointing backward. They rehearse old grievances until the memory of their father becomes bigger than their own reflection in the mirror. They wait for healing to come from someone else’s apology. But healing doesn’t work like that. Healing begins when you accept that no one else is coming to rescue you—and that you don’t need them to.

Growing up is partly learning that people are flawed. That your parents, however sacred or disappointing, were human beings working with what they had. Sometimes they didn’t know better. Sometimes they did and still failed. But endlessly re-litigating those failures is a poor substitute for growth.

What matters is what you do with the pieces.

You can blame the men before you—or you can become the man you needed them to be.

Responsibility sounds dull compared to the heat of resentment. But responsibility is where the real fire is. It’s where your life begins to take shape on your terms. When you decide to build something better—not out of spite, but out of vision—you become something different. You stop being a reaction and start being a force.

Blame is passive. Ownership is active.

There’s no ceremony for this kind of transition. It’s quiet, private. Often, no one sees it. But the moment you stop fixating on who failed you and start asking what you can do now, something shifts. You move from being a passenger to taking the wheel.

Some carry father wounds for life. But others become fathers themselves—not just biologically, but in the broader sense: creators, mentors, builders of a better legacy. They don’t pretend the past was perfect. They simply stop letting it dictate their future.

Not because it didn’t matter.

But because something else matters more.

The Father Wound

I have yet to meet someone who does not carry, in some form, a scar shaped like their father.

Some wear it openly and rich with exaggeration and embellishment  — an ache wrapped in anger or longing. Others tuck it away, quiet and folded like an old letter never sent. But it is there. Behind the eyes of grown men who still seek approval. Beneath the strength of women who learned early to protect their hearts. In the silence between generations, where things are felt but never said.

There is something universal about father wounds. They are not always born of cruelty. More often, they arise from absence — of words, of warmth, of presence. Even in homes where the father stayed, there are many ways a man can be gone.

Part of the weight lies in what the father represents. Across cultures and centuries, “Father” has not only been a man but a metaphor — for authority, protection, provision, and identity. In scripture, God is called Father. In myth, the patriarch is the one who bestows names, blessing, and land. He is the one we turn to, or run from, or try to become. Or, failing all that, the one we write about when we finally find the words.

No man can bear that symbolic weight. To be called ‘Father’ is to be cast in a role written by divine hands and performed by mortal ones; imperfect and flawed. Is it any wonder so many stumbles under its gravity? This is more acute when a child is sensitive. 

And so the ache passes down. Generation to generation. A man unloved becomes a father unsure of how to love. A boy raised on correction but starved of affection may either repeat the pattern or break under the strain of resisting it. Even the most tender-hearted father wrestles with the tension between authority and gentleness, between providing and being present. And many father complainers who become fathers learn this lesson. A man once said, "I let my son do as he wishes." But this came back to bite when the son's life spiralled into depression through wrong decisions  and later said to his father, "Why didn't you guide me?"

These days there are many fathers walk out in their marriages and leave a child feeling lost and confused. This produces mental and emotional scars that live with them for eternity. My father closed his eyes in my early teens and I know that pain.

Sons often grow up trying to earn their father's blessing, even if it was never offered. Daughters may grow up seeking the kind of safe embrace that protects without control. Both may enter adulthood still reaching for a word that was never spoken: You are enough.

Some of us spiritualize this longing, casting our eyes upward. We learn to speak of God as Father — a perfect parent who sees, knows, and understands. And yet even here the wounds speak. Many find it hard to trust a heavenly Father when their earthly one was distant, angry, or absent. The metaphors of scripture are not always healing at first. They must be lived into, slowly, like sunlight warming a long-shadowed room.

What does it mean, then, to grow beyond the wound?

If the ache is universal, so too is the hope of healing. Our stories need not end where they began. For many, healing comes slowly through self analysis and re-parenting the child within. For some, it comes in becoming a better father — or even a spiritual father — to others.

And for others still, it comes with the quiet conviction that we are not alone. That the One who called himself “Abba” meets us in our longing. Not with judgment, but with presence. Not with law, but with love.

No father can be perfect. But in the ache left behind, there is a strange kind of invitation — to look  inward, and forward. 

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 After a busy morning yesterday, I decided I deserved the afternoon off. I sat in front of YouTube, allowing it to numb me. I was barely paying attention when the algorithm threw me a curveball, one that carried me straight back to the seventies.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I once worked night shifts in the Safeway supermarket on Paisley Road West. One morning, after finishing work, I wandered into Glasgow for no particular reason. As I passed Midland Street, a haunting piece of music drifted from a record shop. It was called Daybreak by an Irish group named Horslips. I walked straight in and bought it.

Back on the nightshift, I would play it over the public address system. My colleagues heard it too, and soon they were buying the album for themselves.

Their next album, The Man Who Built America, ended—if I remember rightly—with a melancholic track called I’ll Be Waiting. It’s a song about migration and It always made me feel strangely lonely, as though I were standing at the end of something.

Yesterday, that very song emerged on YouTube, this time played with the Ulster Orchestra. Some songs aren’t merely heard—they’re imprinted. They lie dormant for years, like seeds scattered across the soul in youth, waiting for time and experience to crack them open. Then, suddenly, decades later, a familiar melody resurfaces—not as background music, but as a key turning in the lock of memory.

In that moment, you’re no longer the age you are. You’re every age you’ve ever been. The tune becomes a threshold, transporting you back to a room you forgot you once inhabited, or to a version of yourself long buried beneath the sediment of years.

But it’s more than memory. It’s a kind of existential vertigo. Because the music doesn’t just bring the past forward—it reveals the distance travelled. It highlights the ache of transience. The weight of being. It reminds you that once, you felt everything with raw immediacy—and that now, you live with the knowledge you will never be that unguarded again.

This is nostalgia not as sentimentality, but as spiritual gravity—a longing for something both lost and eternal. The music becomes the ghost of your former self, and you find yourself mourning not only what was, but what could have been. It’s as if the soul remembers something the mind cannot articulate. I find it faith strengthening; a sense that life is more than chronology, and that these echoes from the past are proof we were meant to be more than dust and decay.

And so, you listen again. Not for pleasure alone, but for anchorage. Because in a world where everything changes, the song still plays—and in it, for a moment, so do you.

I’ll Be Waiting Horslips "I'll Be Waiting"

Tell me dear reader, do you share my sentiment? Share your comment in the comments box 

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The Ache of Joy

Joy is one of the most abused words in the English language. It’s been flattened and repurposed to describe the trivial: a joyride, a joystick, a throwaway feeling. But true Joy—if we’ve ever known it—cannot be summoned at will. It comes like a ghost, or grace. And when it does, it leaves us changed.

The old Gaelic phrase Tìr an Aigh means “Land of Joy.” It speaks not of this world’s fleeting highs but of something promised. A paradise. A homeland of the soul. You’ll find the phrase buried in hymns and sung in Highland verse—an echo of a people who knew what it was to long for something more, something better than here.

C.S. Lewis understood this longing. He called it Joy, but made it clear it was not the same as happiness or pleasure. It was a desire for something we can’t name—a glimpse of Eden, a pull from beyond the veil. He tells of standing beside a flowering currant bush one summer and being struck—not by memory, exactly, but by a longing for a memory, a desire for something he couldn’t hold. “It was a sensation,” he writes, “of desire; but desire for what?” The moment passed, as such moments do. And yet the longing remained—more desirable than the fulfilment of any earthly wish.

I have felt it, too. Often in the quiet, in the ordinary—a shaft of sunlight across the sea, the cry of geese across an autumn sky, a line from a song that stirs tears from nowhere. It arrives, unbidden and unsought, and disappears before we can catch our breath. What remains is not disappointment, but longing. A yearning for the yearning.

That, I believe, is a mercy.

Because this longing is a signpost. It tells me that the world is not enough. That the brokenness and beauty we live with every day are not the whole story. That Joy, in its true form, is not of this world. Not yet.

The day will come when the door that lets in those sudden shafts of light will open wide. When heaven and earth are no longer estranged but unified under Christ Jesus. When the ache is answered. When the glimpse becomes the landscape. When the memory we never knew we had becomes our eternal home.

That is Tìr an Aigh. That is Joy.

And we are not wrong to long for it.

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You need to turn from your past,

and you need to pray

 that the Lord will forgive

 the evil intent of your heart.

—Acts 2:22

The Voice Bible

Tom Buchanan from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald stands out as a figure given to evil—racist, adulterous, arrogant, and proud. He believes in his own superiority, though it is ultimately superficial and performative. He ruins lives yet remains unrepentant and blind to his own moral decay. But this is only fiction, right? And yet, behind every story there are truths played out by the human race. 

There’s a quiet sorrow in living a life that feels off-course. You may not admit it out loud, but something gnaws at you in the early hours or when you’re alone with your thoughts. Perhaps you’ve carried anger too long. Perhaps you’ve nurtured resentment, or worse, justified it. You might even feel the world owes you something, a debt for your pain, your struggle, your story.

But what if that belief is untrue?

What if, deep down, you’ve been hiding from something more difficult to face: the harm you’ve caused, the mistakes you’ve buried, the sense of entitlement you never earned? Maybe a parent overindulged you, perhaps with good intentions. But somewhere along the way, you came to believe that others should bend to your desires, that your pain justified badness. That your privilege was proof of worth.

But true worth isn’t inherited. It isn’t given. It’s forged, by how we treat others, how we respond when we are wrong, how we grow from the truth instead of running from it.

And the truth is this: you cannot be happy while hiding from yourself.

The world does not owe us peace when we have withheld it from others. It cannot gift us joy when we trade in bitterness. And worst of all, we cannot stand tall before God while clinging to a heart that harbours hatred, manipulation, or unrepented harm.

But this is not the end. This moment—right now—can be the beginning of something far better.

You were made for more. Not for secrets, not for self-deception, not for a shallow sense of superiority. You were made to love and be loved. To be at peace with God and at peace with your neighbour. And yes, even to forgive yourself once you’ve truly faced what needs to be faced.

The Bible says God is near to the broken-hearted (Psalm 34:18). That includes those broken by their own doing. It is not weakness to weep for what you’ve done, it’s the first step to becoming whole.

You cannot rewrite your past, but you can change your course. You can own your wrongs. You can apologize, even if forgiveness isn’t granted. You can stop blaming others and start becoming the person you were always meant to be.

This journey requires humility. It requires honesty. But it also offers something incomparable: peace of mind, and the quiet joy of a life lived right.

Don’t wait for the world to change. Change your heart. Change your path. And you will find that happiness, the real kind, the kind that holds up even in storms, has been waiting for you all along.

God has not given up on you. Don’t give up on yourself. Today is a good day to begin again.

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

"A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius,

and do not harm the oil and wine." — Revelation 6:6 (BSB)

A Quart of Wheat for a Denarius

L. P. Hartley once wrote in The Go-Between, "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."
We like to think we've moved on. In our modern age of data, satellites, and instant answers, we walk with the confident gait of the enlightened. We scoff at ancient rituals and mock the gods of the past, shaking our heads at how gullible people once were. But are we so different?

There is a god that has followed us through the ages.
Mamona (מָמוֹנָא), the Aramaic term from long ago, still breathes beneath our economies and ambitions. It doesn’t ask for incense or chanting—it demands loyalty through greed, shortcuts, deception, and exploitation.
We see its influence in the trader who overcharges, the builder who cuts corners, the salesman who promises what he cannot deliver. It's there in the man who robs his own grandmother of her savings, in the corrupt politician whose pockets are full while his conscience is empty, in the corporations lobbying against climate action while the planet burns.

Mamona—money, wealth, greed—has become more than currency. It is a spirit. A force. A false god.
No wonder it’s listed among the great powers that corrupt. No wonder Revelation paints a chilling picture of its grip:
"A quart of wheat for a denarius..."—a day’s wages for a single meal—while the wealthy plead, "Do not harm the oil and wine."
The poor are left to starve; the rich fear for their luxuries.

Is it any different today? We switch on the news and see children with hollow eyes and empty bowls, their faces swarmed by flies. Meanwhile, markets fret over fine wine and artisanal produce. We live in a world where food is a commodity, not a right, and Mamona is the name we dare not speak.

But it’s not too late to think again.
What if we turned our backs on this false god? What if we loosened its grip on our hearts and lifted our eyes to something higher—compassion, justice, mercy? What if, instead of guarding the oil and wine, we poured it out for others?

The past may be a foreign country. But the future is ours to shape. Let us not bow to Mamona. Let us choose love.

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Whoever cares for the poor makes a loan

 to the Eternal;

    such kindness will be repaid in full 

and with interest.

Proverbs 19:17

The Voice Bible

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The Currency of Kindness

I’m sitting in my car tonight and  watching people come and go, as a young man holds out his cup, hoping for a little help. He isn’t drunk or high. That’s clear. But as evening begins to settle, there’s an urgency in his voice — a quiet desperation — as he tries to gather the £20 or so he needs for a bed in the hostel before nightfall.

It’s 31 degrees in Scotland today — a rare, baking heat — and he’s been sitting there for hours in the blistering sun. Some passers-by drop coins into his polystyrene cup. Others walk past, eyes averted. But it’s not enough. You can see the despair in the lines etched on his face.

We so easily make excuses: “He’s probably an addict,” we say, or, “It’s their own fault.” And just like that, we talk ourselves out of compassion. But tell me — if someone is willing to sit for hours in that heat, humbling themselves for the chance of a bed and a shower, how can we justify walking by?

Many young people find themselves in desperate situations through no fault of their own. Life can unravel quickly. A home lost. A relationship broken. A support system gone. Sometimes, all that stands between someone and despair is a kind stranger.

We don’t give to feel good, albeit we do. We don’t give for that adrenalin rush; we don’t give to obtain kudos from God. We give because we are part of a human race that has the quality of selfless love. But in that act of unselfish love, God is in our debt. Try and get your head around that promise from God.

Whoever cares for the poor makes a loan to the Eternal;
    such kindness will be repaid in full and with interest.

Proverbs 19:17

The Voice

The Voice (VOICE)

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

“Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.”
—Saadi Shirazi

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These words by the Persian poet Saadi have echoed across centuries and cultures for a reason. They offer a clear and enduring truth: to be human is to be bound to others. Not by preference, but by nature. We belong to one another.

In this shrinking world, where a crisis in one country can ripple instantly across continents, his image of humanity as one body is not poetic exaggeration. It’s reality. What one person suffers, the rest of us should feel. Not out of sentimentality, but out of shared essence.

We often speak of the world as a global village. But Saadi reminds us it’s not just a village of trade, travel, and technology; it’s a village of souls. And within it are people who deserve our love and compassion, not because they’re familiar, but because they’re human.

This kinship crosses all lines. The child in Gaza, the grandmother in Glasgow, the teacher in Tehran, we are connected. When one part of the body is wounded, the rest cannot be well. Paul expressed the same truth in his letter to the Corinthians: “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.”

This is the essence of moral life: feeling for others as for us. It’s not about grand gestures. It’s about refusing to grow indifferent. About seeing others not as strangers, but neighbours. Not as burdens, but brothers and sisters.

To be human is to remember we are not islands. We are a village.
And in that village, love is not optional.
It is the pulse of a living soul.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

One day an expert in the law stood up to test Him. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” Jesus replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus said. “Do this and you will live.”

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus took up this question and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.

Now by chance a priest was going down the same road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

So too, when a Levite came to that spot and saw him, he passed by on the other side.

But a Samaritan on a journey came upon him, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Take care of him,’ he said, ‘and on my return I will repay you for any additional expense.’

Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

“The one who showed him mercy,” replied the expert in the law.

Then Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Luke 10: BSB

For the eyes of the LORD roam to and fro over all the earth,

to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are fully devoted to Him. 

2 Chronicled 16:9

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The Moral Issue Behind Evil

Why does God allow evil? It’s a question that echoes through time, across cultures and creeds, and finds a voice in every broken heart. But perhaps it's the wrong question. Perhaps we should be asking: What does evil reveal?

Take your teenage son or daughter. At home, they may be polite, devout, and upright. But what about when they’re alone? Or out with friends, away from your watchful eye? Sometimes, only in your absence will their true character emerge. You might never know who they really are unless you could observe them incognito.

And that, perhaps, is how it goes with God.

There’s a verse in Scripture that says, “For the eyes of the LORD roam to and fro over all the earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are fully devoted to Him. ” (2 Chronicles 16:9). This is not the surveillance of a tyrant but the quiet attentiveness of a Father; one who chooses, for a time, to allow freedom. Why? Because only in freedom can love and loyalty be real.

We are on a level playing field. There is no visible hand of God reaching into every moment to stop the liar, the thief, or the tyrant. And in that “absence,” something holy is taking place: our loyalty is being tested. Not just yours or mine, but humanity, past, present and future. The same moral test that was once laid before our first parents in Eden still lingers. The serpent’s whisper wasn’t a contest of strength, it was a question of loyalty. “Did God really say…?” was not a call to arms, but a challenge to trust.

It was the same with Job. The accuser didn’t say, “Let’s see who is stronger—God or me.” That’s easy. Strength can be measured in a moment. Arm-wrestle a man and you’ll soon find the stronger one. But say, “I am more loyal, more honest, more faithful than you,” and suddenly the proof takes a lifetime. This is the moral question at the heart of our suffering: Will we remain loyal to a God we cannot always see, touch, or understand?

This is the drama of life—not played out in cosmic battlefields but in quiet acts of courage, hidden faithfulness, and the refusal to betray love even in darkness. The Apostle Paul touched on this when he wrote ” 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). Not by accident or chaos, but by design. This futility, this ache we feel for justice and peace and permanence, is not without purpose. It sharpens the soul. It exposes the heart. And it makes space for faith.

God does not want robotic worship or coerced allegiance. He wants to know, do we love Him even when we don’t see Him? Will we walk the right path when no one is looking? Will we remain true in the desert, not just in the garden?

There will come a time when the hidden things are brought into the light, when the testing ends and the eyes of the Father meet ours again. Until then, we live in the tension—between absence and presence, doubt and faith, struggle and hope. But this life is not without meaning. It is the proving ground of the heart. The battle is not about power—it never was. It is about love. About loyalty.

And love that endures when it would be easier to walk away. that is the kind of love that lasts forever.

Bible verses from the BSB Bible.

Too Young to Choose It

The '70s were the birth of the supermarkets. Safeway, the American chain, was expanding into Scotland. I worked the night shift at Paisley Road West while wondering what choices to make in life. One evening, we had a new employee. 

The night shift procedure was routine: pull out the pallets of stock, spot them in the appropriate aisles, price and pack the items. By the time the stock was cleared—around 3 a.m.—the weariness of the night overwhelmed us. The numbing fatigue was exasperated by the gentle rhythm of the David Bowie song on the radio: “You're too old to lose it, too young to choose it.”

“Okay, you two, start washing the floor,” the night manager said to me and the new boy.

“What part?” the new boy asked.

“All of it,” the manager replied.

The new boy took in a panoramic view of the floor and asked, “All that?” with a look of disbelief.

“All of it,” the boss repeated.

“I’m out of here. I’m getting my jacket.”

He walked into the darkness. A few moments later, he banged on the plate-glass window and shouted, “You’re all a bunch of losers!”

We all turned away and got on with the work, singing “You’re a rock and roll suicide” to the chorus of Bowie’s song. I then mused over the remaining hours: What will I do with my life?

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A Prayer in Govan

One Saturday being at a loose end whilst my wife was working, I went walking through Govan, tracing the steps of my childhood with that odd blend of nostalgia and ache. Fourteen years of early life were lived here, and though the skyline has shifted, and the shops have changed hands, no Curley’s, no Woolworth’s and no Modern Bookshop. The later, a sanctuary for a child escaping through poverty and a sense of adventure in comics.

The bones of the place remain familiar. It was one of those quiet, reflective strolls—no agenda, just memory. Drawn by the stillness of the place, I wandered into the grounds of the old church at Govan Cross to see the ancient stones, artifacts of history.  I wasn’t even sure if the church was still functioning or simply a monument to what once was. It had that solemn presence old churches carry—stone thick with prayers, weathered by time.

I didn’t expect to meet anyone, but within minutes I was in conversation with three strangers—a woman from Peru, a woman from the United States, and a man who, after listening quietly for a while, mentioned he was the minister of the Govan Free Church.

We spoke for a little while—of this and that, life, place, belonging. Somewhere in that natural flow of conversation, I shared my health condition—neuroendocrine cancer, and how it had taken a stealthy toll, spreading to other organs. I hadn’t intended to go there, but sometimes the truth just slips out when the company is kind.

There was no dramatic reaction. Just quiet listening. Eyes that didn't flinch. A nod of understanding.

Sometime later, I heard from someone that the minister had taken my name to their weekly prayer meeting and he had prayed for me.

It moved me more than I can say.

There’s something profound about that kind of gesture. In a world that’s often loud and fast and transactional, it was a moment of pure human kindness. Unasked for. Unobligated. Offered anyway in an act of Christian love.

Prayer, after all, is not just words spoken into the air. It’s an act of care. Of pause. Of bringing someone else's name before God with reverence and hope.

That day in Govan, the town of my boyhood gave me more than memory. It gave me grace. In the form of strangers. In the form of a prayer.