Personal Blogs

Written in the Genes

In the back end of the 70s, I was standing on the thin edge between boyhood and whatever came next, I sensed a quiet unravelling. The friendships of my youth fell away, not with drama but with a kind of inevitability. I was restless. Unqualified, unformed and lost. Cardonald College in Glasgow became my refuge, a place to gather the pieces required for university after wasted school years, though I suspected I was searching for something less tangible than certificates.

One Sunday afternoon a door-to-door evangelist knocked my door; he noticed me watching a Scottish Gaelic language programme called Can Seo. Nothing remarkable in that, yet a week later he placed a cassette in my hands. A folk group called Na h-Òganaich. I remember the feel of the music unfamiliar yet familiar. I played it until the music felt less like sound and more like memory. Soon after, I found my way to Runrig’s Play Gaelic. The songs did not simply entertain me. They unsettled me. It was as though a door had opened somewhere inside and light poured through.

Youth have a way of disguising turning points as accidents. Someone gives you a cassette. You press play. A seed is planted in the dark.

Last year, decades later, that seed stirred again. At the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Beat the Drum performed a Runrig tribute set before an audience drawn from across the UK, Ireland, and mainland Europe; a primarily over 50s audience. I looked around at faces lit by stage light and memory. We were not merely spectators. We were witnesses to something we had carried for years.

For much of my life I felt a quiet grievance with the curve balls that life handed me. Why Govan? Why tenements and shipyards, angry hammers and the neurotic sizzle of welding torches. Why not sea lochs and machair and the tongue to read the poets? Why Glasgow and not the Hebrides? Age softens certain questions. I have made peace with this pilgrim rather than a native. Still, there remains a pull I cannot fully name.

I felt it again watching Donnie Munro Walk the ridgelines of Skye in Wilderness Walks. The Cuillins rose behind him, ancient and unspeaking. He spoke of music as though it were a current running through the human spirit, invisible yet undeniable. He recalled a concert in Ireland during the years of unrest. The morning after, a Catholic woman approached the band to thank them. Her family had attended and for a few hours, she said, the bitterness that haunted their home had loosened its grip.

A song cannot rewrite history. Yet it can still a storm, if only briefly.

That story settled into me. I grew up far from the islands where Gaelic endured, yet the language had claimed me early. Over the years I travelled north and west. Skye. Islay. Jura. Each arrival felt less like discovery and more like recognition. I would stand looking out over water and feel an easing in my chest, as if my internal compass had stopped trembling.

Curiosity eventually led me to test my ancestry. Numbers returned, clinical and precise. Ninety percent Celtic heritage, reaching even to Brittany.

I was adopted as a baby so I never knew the details of family history, so after a DNA test and some digging. My paternal line traced back to Islay. The island that had long stirred something wordless within me was not only a symbol. It was blood.

What are we to do with such knowledge?

It is easy to dismiss these moments as coincidence, to speak of probability and genetic drift. Yet when a melody learned in adolescence continues to echo across a lifetime, when a landscape you have barely known feels like an inheritance, coincidence begins to feel too small a word.

Perhaps there are currents moving beneath the visible world. Currents of language, of song, of memory carried not only in stories but in cells. Perhaps what we call longing is simply recognition delayed.

I think now of that young man in 1974, sitting with a borrowed cassette, unaware that he was being quietly called home. Not to a place he had lived, but to a place that had lived in him.

And I am left with the sense that our lives are threaded with meanings we only perceive in retrospect. A melody. A mountain. A strand of DNA. Each one a whisper.

As if something within us has always known.

I entered the day to the expression in news reports of  "Iran's existential crisis." I wondered what this meant, so I did a bit of digging as I don't like expressions that I do not understand to fly past me. I write with no political position on the present conflict but ask, what does that expression mean? In political language, that phrase means more than battlefield damage or diplomatic tension. It suggests that the survival of the state—or at least the survival of its present ruling system—is perceived to be at risk. When leaders use such language, they imply that the very continuation of their authority, stability, and national identity is threatened.

History teaches us that when nations feel cornered, they often respond with heightened resolve rather than retreat. An existential crisis does not typically produce surrender; it produces intensity. Governments consolidate power. Citizens rally, whether out of patriotism, fear, or both. The danger in such a moment is escalation. When survival is believed to be at stake, compromise becomes harder, and measured responses give way to sweeping ones.

Yet political structures are only part of the story. Beneath the language of strategy and deterrence are ordinary people—families, workers, children—who bear the weight of decisions made far above them. An existential crisis for a government quickly becomes uncertainty, anxiety, and deprivation for its citizens. Infrastructure falters. Markets tremble. Young men face mobilization. Parents fear for their sons. The rhetoric of survival translates into sleepless nights.

There is another dimension rarely discussed openly but quietly present. In recent years, reports have circulated that many Iranians have shown interest in Christianity, often in discreet and private ways. Much of this spiritual movement takes place quietly, even surreptitiously, because of social and legal pressures. Whether those reports are large or small in scale, they suggest something deeper than politics: a spiritual searching within a people whose history is rich, ancient, and complex.

War has a strange effect on faith. Sometimes it hardens conviction; sometimes it softens hearts. Crisis strips away illusion. When political systems shake, people often ask deeper questions about hope, truth, meaning, and the future. It is not for outsiders to judge the authenticity or motivation of such spiritual movements. But it is worth noting that existential language in politics often coincides with existential searching in the human soul.

How all this will unfold is impossible to predict with certainty. Military analysts will speak of deterrence, regional balance, and strategic objectives. Economists will weigh sanctions and oil flows. Diplomats will calculate leverage. But history shows that once conflict reaches the stage where survival is invoked, the path forward becomes less predictable.

My only wish is that this nation—and all nations involved—may find a way toward peace. Not a fragile pause between retaliations, but a peace that allows people to live without fear. A peace that gives room for conscience, for faith, for honest inquiry, and for ordinary life to flourish again.

In times when governments speak of survival, it is worth remembering that survival alone is not the highest good. Peace, dignity, and freedom of the soul matter as well. However, this crisis unfolds, one can only hope that the outcome bends toward restraint, toward mercy, and toward a future where the word “existential” no longer hangs so heavily over an entire people. I pray for these ordinary people.

And each one will sit under their vine and fig tree

with no one to frighten them . For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Micah 4:4

Why Am I Just Ordinary?

I watched a short clip this week of a child with a prosthetic leg negotiating the rough terrain of South America. When resting, she was asked her favourite Bible verse. Without hesitation she said, “Genesis 1:26.” She didn’t explain her choice. She simply smiled, as if the answer was obvious when I meditated on it for a while.

“Let us make man in our image…”

For the Bible scholars out there, who like to run to check the original Hebrew for the word “image”, let me run this past you, it can mean a visible expression of invisible authority. Now that is most interesting. We should see in fellow humans this visible expression of something invisible. Let’s explore that.

Perhaps the child mentioned earlier understood something that we, with all our complications and commentaries, sometimes miss. To be made in the image of God is not a decorative idea. It is a staggering claim. It means that before we accomplish anything, before we succeed or fail, before we impress or disappoint, there is already something remarkable about us.

We are not cosmic leftovers. Not accidents with consciousness. Not merely advanced animals scrambling for survival. Genesis gives us a different perspective. It tells us we were made with intention. With resemblance. With capacity.

And even now—after centuries of selfishness, violence, pride, and heartbreak—that image has not vanished. It may be scarred. It may be obscured. But it has not been erased. We still recognise love as beautiful. We still admire patience. We are still moved when we see mercy triumph over cruelty. Something in us responds because something in us remembers.

If evolution alone were the full explanation, survival would be enough. Strength would be ultimate. Yet human beings ache for goodness even when it costs them. We feel the nobility of sacrifice. We sense the rightness of forgiveness. We cannot quite shake the conviction that kindness matters.

Why should it, unless it reflects the One whose image we bear?

This is why there is nothing trivial about so-called ordinary life. The world has trained us to equate significance with spectacle. Noise, platform, applause—these are offered as measures of worth. If it is unseen, it must not matter. If it is quiet, it must be small.

But that is not how Genesis begins the story.

The Japanese word tada (ただ) carries the sense of “just” or “simply.” It suggests something unadorned, without exaggeration. Nothing added. Nothing inflated. Just what is. There is humility in that word, and presence. No performance, no embellishment, no self-advertising.

In a restless age, that kind of simplicity can look unimpressive.

Yet what if living “just” as we were made to live is precisely where glory is found?

When someone tells the truth though it would be easier not to, when a weary person chooses patience instead of sharpness, when love is extended quietly and without witness—these moments may pass unnoticed on earth. No headlines are written. No followers accumulate.

But something eternal is happening.

To reflect the character of God, however imperfectly, is to participate in something vast. It is to echo eternity in the space of an ordinary Tuesday. A gentle answer, a restrained word, a faithful prayer offered in private—these are not small acts. They are signs that the image still flickers, still shines.

Are we ordinary when we live like this? I wouldn't say so; these are the people I am drawn to.

In the world’s categories, perhaps. In God’s, hardly.

To reflect our reason for creation is not ordinary at all. It is alignment. It is restoration beginning to unfold. It is humanity becoming what it was always meant to be. And even if that reflection appears quiet, even if it draws no crowd, it participates in something cosmic and everlasting.

There is deep dignity in a life without spectacle. A life without pretension. A life that does not need to inflate itself to be real.

The child who named Genesis 1:26 may not have offered an explanation, but perhaps she didn’t need to. To be made in God’s image is already explanation enough.

There is nothing ordinary about bearing that.

The Night the World Whispered Something Spiritual

Last night our bodies were aching from a stubborn virus—the sort that makes even a cough feel like your brain is about to explode and your throat like a fiery inferno. Still, we kept our little evening rhythm: Bible discussion first, then our audiobook session with An Invisible Thread by Laura Schroff and Alex Tresniowski, which I will review when we finish.

Afterward, neither of us had much strength, but those words had steadied the room. It helps to read about the better aspects of human nature.

“Put on something gentle and relaxing,” my wife said. “Something that won’t require effort.”

So I opened YouTube.

Up came a video: believers from around the world, linked across screens and time zones, performing The Blessing. Faces in small rectangles. Living rooms. Mountains. Kitchens. Japanese villages. Different accents, different lighting, different ages—one song.

REAL HOPE for 2026 ♥ THE WORLD BLESSING ♥ 500 Versions of the Blessing in One ♥

It was beautiful, hypnotic, relaxing and feel good.

Then another appeared. Japan. Then Nigeria. Then South Sudan. Israel. Singapore.  The UK. Ireland. One after another—the same song, carried in different timbres, rising from continents we’ve never walked.

We lay there feverish and still, yet suddenly we were global.

Our bodies were fighting infection, but our hearts were traveling. Each nation sang the same ancient promise—that the Lord bless you and keep you—and it felt less like a performance and more like participation in something vast and unseen.

Without noticing, the night grew late.

The weakness remained. The fever did not vanish. But something had shifted. While our bodies did their quiet work of recovery, our spirits had been tended.

And when we finally closed our eyes, it felt as though the world itself had whispered a blessing over the room and I whispered to my wife, "What a time we will have when we enter the paradise that Jesus promised.

How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in harmony!

Psalm 131:1

Blessed Are the People Who Embody Omotenashi.

It was just before the world went quiet and imprisoned indoors due to Covid. We took the twenty-minute drive to the ferry terminal at Ardrossan to catch the boat to the Island of Arran. On embarking, we took the bus to Lochranza, a quiet little village in the north of the island that hosts a centre for geological studies for those fascinated by the secrets rocks hold, amongst other things. The village, with a population of just over 200, was peaceful but with a castle, it revealed a more hostile past.

The Guardian Newspaper described it as one of Britain’s great walks. We knocked on a door to ask where the walk began. The man asked his wife to bring out drinks and snacks while he fetched a map and gave us directions. As a collector of untranslatables—I know, it’s a nerdy hobby—nothing pleases me more than words that demonstrate the better angels of our nature. The Japanese word omotenashi seemed perfect for the occasion. It is often translated simply as “hospitality,” but it means wholehearted, selfless service—anticipating a guest’s needs before they speak. It is grace without display. Care without announcement. We often meet this spirit in Scotland’s rural places.

As we crossed over the hill, disturbing the grazing sheep, we were met by a hissing adder that seemed to say, “You dare come near me?” I found it odd that it was lying on top of the stone footpath on such a hot summer day. Perhaps a bird of prey had dropped it. I used my walking pole to move it into the vegetation.

On reaching the top of the hill, we were welcomed by a still, mirror-like sea—the Firth of Clyde. We stood there taking in the view and decided to have our picnic, reasoning that this was the prettiest place to absorb the Creator’s handiwork.

As we embarked on the ten-mile walk to Sannox, we were met with many photo opportunities, including an old cottage from a bygone age. I began to ponder what life may have been like for its residents. A cottage by the sea sounds idyllic, but there were prices to pay for living a rural life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

I also found myself pondering what Jesus meant when He said, “The meek will inherit the earth.” He was quoting Psalm 37:10–11. In the BSB translation we read:

“Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more;
though you look for them, they will not be found.
But the meek will inherit the land
and delight in abundant prosperity.”

What can be said about this promise? Is it speaking of a rejuvenation of the planet—a system restored back to the garden? It surely makes sense to say so. And if I may put in an offer for this majestic view over the Firth of Clyde, my offer is in.

We eventually reached our goal, but as the poet says about the best-laid plans of mice and men… we forgot to check the return bus times. This is a rural island, so buses do not arrive as frequently as those in the city. It seemed we would have to wait two hours or walk. Walking was not an option after completing more than ten miles already.

We stood there bewildered, but within a few minutes an “Out of Service” bus passed by. The driver took pity on us, stopped, and took us to the ferry.

The Guardian Newspaper described this walk as one of Britain's great walks. I would add that it was fulfilling for the scenery, the rejuvenation and the lovely people we meet on the journey.

And my thought for the day: blessed are the kind and hospitable. Blessed are the people who embody omotenashi.”

The Pain of Rejection

“I tell you this: on the day of judgment,

people will be called to account for every careless word they have ever said.”

— Matthew 12:36 (The Voice)

There Will Be An Unfolding of Truth

Have you ever been wounded by gossip or slander?

When I read Psalm 120, it feels less like ancient poetry and more like a report from my own life. Perhaps you will feel the same. The Psalms catalogue the full terrain of the human heart—its joys and its sorrows—and that is why they have comforted souls for centuries.

I know what it is to be spoken about rather than spoken to. I know the peculiar violence of distorted stories carried from voice to voice. No blood is drawn, yet something real is damaged. A reputation bends. A relationship fractures. A room shifts when you enter it.

The psalmist calls it “lying lips” and a “deceitful tongue.” Those phrases are not exaggerated. They are precise. Words can become weapons without ever rising above a whisper.

What strikes me most is not merely the accusation but the restraint. “I am for peace.” That confession carries weight. It means refusing to answer slander with slander. It means choosing silence when retaliation would be easier. It means absorbing misunderstanding rather than escalating conflict.

Yet the psalm does not pretend that careless speech is harmless. There is a reckoning. Sharp arrows and burning coals are images of consequence. Words sent into the world do not dissolve into nothing. They land somewhere. They lodge in someone. And in time, they return to the one who released them.

This is not about vengeance. It is about justice woven into the fabric of reality. Truth has weight. Lies leave debris. A reckless tongue may feel powerful for a moment, but it cannot outrun what it sets in motion.

Psalm 120 gives permission to name the wound without becoming the aggressor. It reminds us that being for peace does not mean pretending no conflict exists. And it reassures us that we do not have to settle every score. There is One who hears. There is One who keeps account.

People may speak carelessly. They may distort, exaggerate, or wound. But their words are not the final word and that is comforting for those who have been victims.

Scripture quotations marked VOICE are taken from The Voice™. Copyright © 2012 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved

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“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.

Frederick Buechner

Returning to Twilight

What is my most beloved poem? I ask myself. Goodness, it feels like choosing a favourite Haribo. Too many shapes, too many colours, too many moods. To name one above the rest feels impossible without consulting others.

Still, if pressed, I can name a poem I return to often. It is not ornate. It does not dazzle, and it’s not like unpacking a double helix. On the surface it appears modest—just a captured moment. Yet each time I step into it, I’m led further inward. Its simplicity is not shallow; it is spacious.

That admission says something about how poetry lives with us. The poem that matters most is rarely the grandest in the canon or the one that demands scholarly admiration. It is often the one that waits patiently. The one that does not exhaust itself in a single reading. The one that appears small at first glance but opens, quietly, like a door into a larger room.

For me, that poem is Longfellow’s The Children’s Hour.

It opens at twilight, that suspended space between daylight and darkness. Longfellow sits in his study and hears the approach of his three daughters. Their steps down the corridor carry conspiracy and delight. They burst into his room and overtake him, laughing, binding him in what he calls their “living chain.” He offers no stern resistance. Instead, there is that “gesture of peace and silence,” that “murmur of soft persuasion.”

Those lines are the key. The poem’s tenderness rests not only in the children’s energy but in the father’s response. Authority softens into affection. The study—a place of intellect and responsibility—yields to embrace. Work gives way to love. This is not chaos; it is interruption welcomed.

Yet twilight matters. Evening suggests transition. Just as day folds into night, childhood folds into maturity. The hour is beautiful precisely because it is passing. Longfellow frames the children almost as mythic beings, bandits and spirits slipping through the house, as though he senses how briefly enchantment lasts.

Here is where the poem deepens for me. Beneath the laughter lies a quieter question. Did Longfellow worry about his daughters’ future? Did he wonder what sort of world awaited them beyond the lamplit safety of his study—what kind of women they would become? He lived in a century unsettled by moral upheaval and approaching civil war. He knew personal sorrow. Innocence, for him, could not have been naïve; it must have felt fragile.

When the children bind him in a “living chain,” the image is playful. Yet he vows to keep that chain fastened in the “round-tower” of his heart. Why preserve a chain unless one knows it will loosen? Children grow. Their arms one day fall away. The father stores the moment because he cannot store the season.

The poem does not speak anxiety aloud, but longing hums beneath it. Every parent, if honest, asks the same questions. Will these lively spirits become responsible, loving, kind adults? Will the gentleness they display in play survive a harsher world? Can affection form character strongly enough to endure disappointment and temptation? He does not know how his children will turn out. They have free will. We have no guarantees; scripture tells us the human heart is treacherous.

Longfellow offers no forecast. Instead, he shows formation through atmosphere. The children are learning what love feels like: secure, joyful, reciprocal. The father allows himself to be captured. Authority bows without humiliation. In that exchange lies education deeper than instruction. Character grows not only from warning but from warmth. A home where laughter interrupts labour becomes soil rich with moral possibility.

The poem honours the privilege of childhood, that rare stretch of life where trust flows easily. At the same time, it acknowledges impermanence without naming it. The future cannot be controlled. The world into which children step will always exceed a parent’s reach. But the heart that steps into that world can be shaped.

That is why I return to this poem. It is not merely nostalgic. It is searching. It suggests that love, given freely in an ordinary hour, may become compass and anchor later on. The living chain may fall from the body, but not from memory.

Perhaps that is why choosing a single cherished poem feels so difficult. We do not choose lightly what has shaped us. Language has many chambers, and I hesitate to close doors. Yet this twilight scene continues to draw me. It reminds me that simple lines can hold deep questions. That laughter can carry longing. That the quietest poems sometimes speak the furthest.

And in that suspended evening hour, I hear more than children’s steps. I hear a father storing light against the coming dark, trusting that what is planted in affection will, in time, bear fruit.

The children's Hour

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44628/the-childrens-hour-56d223ca55069thanked

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Scene: A busy supermarket checkout line

Mary (slipping ahead): “It’s just a few items. I’ll be quick.”

Anna (quietly): “There’s a queue?”

Mary: “It’s not a big deal. I only have three items.”

Anna: “That’s not the point. Join the queue.”

Mary: “You’re really getting in a tizzy over something so small.”

Anna: “It’s not small. You’re acting like your time matters more than everyone else’s.”

Mary (pauses): “…I didn’t think of it that way.”

Anna: “Of course you didn’t, so get in the queue like everyone else.”

The Problem Materialists Cannot Explain

The short dialogue above illustrates something very profound; we are creatures with a moral foundation. We desire justice. It is found everywhere in life, even the stories we read to our children and the movies we watch; there has to be a happy ever after and we subconsciously raise that as we get close to the end. Justice is served the hero walks out at the end where all the loose ends, the denouement is served to our satisfaction. 

Among the many arguments offered by Christian apologists for the existence of God, the Moral Argument stands as one of the most compelling and personally resonant. It does not depend on complex scientific theories or obscure historical analysis. Instead, it begins with something universal: the human experience of right and wrong. The argument proposes that the reality of objective moral values points beyond humanity to a transcendent moral Lawgiver.

The first premise of the Moral Argument asserts that objective moral values exist. By “objective,” we mean moral truths that are valid independently of personal opinion, cultural preference, or historical circumstance. Most people instinctively believe that certain acts—such as torturing children for pleasure or committing genocide—are not merely socially unacceptable but truly wrong. Likewise, acts of self-sacrifice, courage, and love are regarded as genuinely good. These moral judgments are not typically expressed as personal tastes, like preferring one flavour of ice cream over another. Rather, they carry the weight of obligation and the sense that others ought to recognize them as well. This widespread conviction suggests that morality is more than a human invention.

The second premise argues that if objective moral values exist, they require a foundation beyond human opinion. If morality is merely the result of biological evolution, social conditioning, or collective agreement, then it ultimately has no binding authority. Under pure moral relativism, no action is truly right or wrong; it is only approved or disapproved by a particular group at a particular time. Yet our moral experience seems to resist this conclusion. When we condemn historical atrocities, we do not mean merely that we dislike them by modern standards. We mean that they were wrong, even when widely accepted. This language of moral obligation implies accountability to a standard that transcends humanity itself.

Here the argument reaches its central claim: the best explanation for objective moral values is the existence of God. Moral laws imply a moral Lawgiver, just as physical laws imply a rational source. In Christian thought, God’s nature is the ultimate standard of goodness. He does not arbitrarily invent morality; rather, goodness flows from His character. Because human beings are created in the image of God, they possess moral awareness and conscience. This framework explains why moral truths feel authoritative and why guilt, responsibility, and justice are meaningful concepts. Without such a grounding, morality risks becoming an illusion—powerful perhaps, but ultimately reducible to preference or survival strategy.

Philosopher William Lane Craig summarizes the Moral Argument in a concise syllogism:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.

2. Objective moral values do exist.

3. Therefore, God exists (Craig, 2008).

Critics have offered alternative explanations for morality, appealing to evolution, social contracts, or moral realism without God, but these do not stand up to heroic altruism — such as a soldier shielding others from a grenade or a stranger risking his life to save a child — illustrate moral beauty, but they do not in themselves prove God’s existence. The Christian view of the Moral Argument remains powerful because it connects intellectual reasoning with lived experience. It speaks not only to abstract philosophy but to the deep human sense that justice matters, that evil is real, and that love is more than chemistry.

In the end, the Moral Argument challenges us to consider whether our moral convictions are signals pointing beyond ourselves. If goodness is not a mere by-product of blind forces, then it may reflect the character of a personal, righteous Creator. For many Christian apologists, this insight provides not only a rational basis for belief in God but also a profound affirmation of human dignity and moral responsibility

Reference

Craig, W.L., 2008. Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics. 3rd ed. Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

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What Leaves When Life Leaves

Life. It is a strange old mystery.

I do not mean the plans we make, the joys we chase, or even the suffering we endure. I mean life itself. What is it?

A man stands beside his loved one in a hospital bed. The machines that once kept her alive have been switched off. She lies there still. Her face unchanged. Her identity unmistakable. This is the bride he once walked down the aisle with.

Biochemist James Tour  Speaking in Socrates in the City explains that while science can describe chemical processes in remarkable detail, it remains unable to explain how life itself arises (Tour, n.d.). Tour illustrates this uncertainty by asking us to imagine standing in a laboratory. Your hands are steady. Your eyes are trained on a cluster of living cells. Everything is controlled. Sterile. Precise. You know the protocols. You know the equipment.

Then one cell dies.

What exactly has gone, we may ask?

Its structure remains. The membrane is intact. The chemistry is still there. You have microscopes, reagents, machines worth millions. Surely something can be done. Surely life can be restarted.

But it cannot.

Once life leaves, it does not come back. Not by force. Not by knowledge. Not by will. It is gone.

That quiet, irreversible collapse exposes a truth we would rather not face. For all our scientific triumphs, we still do not know what life is. With all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, we still cannot put that cell  together again.

That silence should trouble us.

Long before laboratories and microscopes, Jesus spoke words that cut just as deeply:

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?
Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.”
—Matthew 10:29 (BSB)

Picture a sparrow slipping from a branch. One moment animated, the next unmoving. It looks the same. Feathers intact. Weight unchanged. And yet everything has changed.

Life has gone somewhere.

This is not merely biology. It is metaphysics intruding into the everyday. The body remains, but the animating presence has withdrawn. What we are witnessing is absence—and absence speaks.

Jesus sharpens the tension even further:

“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.”
—Matthew 10:28 (BSB)

If this is true, then death does not finish us. It interrupts us.

There is something within a human being that cannot be dismantled by knives, disease, time, or entropy. Something untouchable. Not chemistry. Not neurons alone. Something that uses the body but is not confined to it.

We are not merely assembled matter. We are life-breathed dust.

This thought pressed itself on me while visiting the Titanic Museum in Belfast last year. Names, each name marked a person who loved, feared, hoped, failed, laughed. Just a name. Just silence. Just bodies that once lay there in an open grave, but ate up by the eco system.

Were their lives futile?

The answer depends on where they placed their hope. If existence ends at the grave, then meaning dissolves with the flesh. Memory fades. Identity erodes. Eventually, even the stones themselves crumble.

But if life rests in God’s hands, then death is not an eraser. It is a pause.

That image unsettles me, in the best way. It refuses despair. It insists that death does not hold the final key.

I accept that consciousness is bound to the brain. Damage the brain, and the mind falters. But I do not believe consciousness is identical to the brain. I believe it is hosted there. Carried. Expressed.

When renewal comes, I believe God will restore more than function. He will restore identity. Memory. Continuity. I will not wake as a stranger inhabiting a replacement shell. I will be myself—fully known, fully restored.

Scripture dares to say this plainly:

“When a man dies, will he live again?
All the days of my hard service I will wait,
until my renewal comes.”
—Job 14:14 (BSB)

That question lingers—unanswered by science and unavoidable in silence.

If life cannot be manufactured, if death cannot be reversed by human hands, then perhaps life was never ours to control in the first place.

And that possibility should unsettle us.

Because it means meaning is not something we invent.

It is something we answer to.

Reference

Tour, J. (n.d.) How Did Life Come Into Being? [online interview]. Socrates in the City. Available at: https://socratesinthecity.com/watch/dr-james-tour-how-did-life-come-into-being/ (Accessed: 9 February 2026).

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“They all lonely in their own way.”

Sam Selvon

The Lonely Londoners

They Are All Lonely in Their Own Way

My wife and I met a couple in the supermarket this evening.
A Caribbean couple. Nothing dramatic—just a few exchanged words, a moment of encouragement, a shared smile. Yet as my wife and I walked away, we both noticed the same thing: a warmth lingered. It felt unforced, generous, quietly alive. It didn’t surprise us to learn that they were Christians. Some people carry their faith not as volume, but as light. This is not to say that we do not find warmth in all kind humans we meet, it is just that our inbuilt antennae feel a God who directs Christians in our life’s pathway.

Their presence stirred a memory from my university days, studying literature. I thought of Sam Selvon, part of the Windrush generation, and of his novel The Lonely Londoners. One line from it has never left me: “They all lonely in their own way.”

Selvon’s genius lies in how effortlessly that sentence lands. It sounds almost casual, as if spoken in passing. And yet inside it is whole lives—exile, hope, humour, and the quiet ache of never fully belonging. Loneliness, in Selvon’s world, isn’t always loud. Often, it’s lived with dignity, even laughter, while something deeper goes unnamed.

The truth is, we all carry an inner loneliness that rises to the surface from time to time. It can feel especially sharp when someone finds themselves in a foreign land and in cities like London or Manchester or Glasgow—places dense with people yet strangely capable of making one feel invisible. Selvon reminds us that beneath accents, histories, and faces lies a shared human vulnerability.

That is why a smile matters. A moment of welcome. A brief, gentle conversation that says, you are seen. Such small gestures invite someone, if only for a moment, back into the wider human family.

This brings me to a much older story, one that still breathes with relevance.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 4, a woman comes to draw water from a well at midday. That detail matters. Women usually went together in the cool of the morning or evening. Midday signals heat, solitude, avoidance. She has chosen the hour when no one else will be there.

Why?

She has been married five times and is now living with a man who is not her husband. In her culture, this history carries deep stigma; especially for a woman. People would have talked. Judged. Kept their distance.

Over time, such judgment does more than isolate socially; it erodes the spirit. It teaches a person to move through the world unnoticed, to expect dismissal.

What is quietly heart breaking is that her loneliness is not simply about being alone. It is about being unseen, unvalued, gently but firmly written off.

And this is where the story turns luminous.

Jesus chooses to meet her there. Not in a crowd. Not in a synagogue. But in the heat of the day, at the very place she goes when she believes no one else will come.

The encounter is gentle, yet radical. He does not treat her loneliness as failure or punishment. He treats it as holy ground; the place where kindness  arrives first.

Perhaps this is the thread that binds Selvon’s Londoners, the woman at the well, and us. We are all lonely in our own way. But loneliness is not the end of the story. It can become the meeting place where compassion interrupts isolation, where a stranger becomes a neighbour, where God steps quietly into the ordinary and says, I see you and I send someone your way.

And sometimes, all it takes to begin that moment is a smile in a supermarket aisle.

Words That Deserve Our Attention: Tapeínōsis

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but something in our common life feels fractured. Like a spoiled child flinging away the dummy, we insist on having things our own way, often without a second glance at our neighbour. Everyone is grasping, demanding, defending. And it leaves me wondering—where are we heading?

Into that noise comes a quiet, easily overlooked word: ταπείνωσις (tapeínōsis). It is usually translated as humility or lowliness, but those words can mislead us if we imagine weakness, self-erasure, or a timid shrinking back. In Scripture, tapeínōsis is not imposed; it is chosen. It is a refusal to grasp for status, a willingness to become small that rises not from shame, but from strength. It belongs to someone who does not need to insist on their importance. In the Christian imagination, humility is not thinking less of oneself, but needing to prove oneself less.

The Apostle Paul gives this vision clear shape in Philippians 2:3–5:

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”

Here, the word translated as “humility” is ταπεινοφροσύνη (tapeinophrosýnē)—a lowliness of mind, an inward posture rather than a public performance.

Jane Austen offers us a negative mirror of this truth in Pride and Prejudice, through the unforgettable figure of Mr. Collins. He speaks the language of humility fluently, but he has no tapeínōsis at all. In his proposal of marriage, he explains:

“My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right thing for every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example of matrimony in his parish; secondly, that I am convinced it will add very greatly to my happiness; and thirdly—which perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier—that it is the particular advice and recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling patroness.”

The speech is funny, but its humour is moral. Mr. Collins is full—full of himself, full of borrowed importance, full of anxious self-regard. He cannot empty himself enough even to see the person before him. Everything becomes status, obligation, performance. Austen shows us that pride does not always shout; sometimes it bows, flatters, and disguises itself as duty.

What Mr. Collins lacks is not confidence, but chosen smallness. He cannot release rank, reputation, or self-justification, and so he never becomes fully human to those around him. His world is crowded with himself, and for that reason, he is curiously alone.

Τapeínōsis invites us into a different way of being. It asks us to step down without fear, to loosen our grip, to trust that our worth does not disappear when we relinquish control. The word shows us that humility is not the loss of glory, but the way glory is transfigured into love. And Austen, with her quiet irony, reminds us what happens when we refuse that path: we may be respectable, even admired, and yet remain strangely, painfully absurd—and alone.

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