Personal Blogs

How Then shall We Comfort Ourselves?

I am on a train feeling lulled by the steady rhythm of the rails. All is well as I quietly read my book when my attention settles on a young mother not far from me. She has two little girls with her. They whisper to each other, swing their legs, exist without self-consciousness. There is something quietly holy about that; innocence unbroken, trust still intact.

At the next stop four men get on and they have loud voices and swaggering bodies. The Swearing makes me cringe as they laugh hard. They are performing in a macho circus for no one in particular. I watch the mother’s shoulders freeze at the expletives. The men are not extraordinary and that is, perhaps, the point. Nothing here would make the news. Nothing here rises to the level of crisis.

And yet, the peaceful spirit of the carriage has changed.

I notice the mother shift in her seat, barely visible, instinctive. I wonder whether she ever pauses to think about the kind of world her daughters are inheriting. I’m sure she does. I think the same for my grandchildren. The question unsettles me as it often does.  Shame follows close behind. Shame that I feel embarrassed by these men; my fellow countrymen. Shame that I recognise them as familiar. Shame that this, in some small way, feels like a reflection of “us.”

Later, walking up Buchanan Street, the pattern repeats itself. Raised voices. Public aggression. Behaviour that once might have been checked by embarrassment now worn openly, even proudly. Again, nothing extreme. No single moment worth recording. Just variations of a theme all too ordinary. And yet people notice. Especially the elderly and wise.

It is not that society collapses in grand, cinematic gestures. It loosens first. Edges fray. Standards slip. Courtesy erodes quietly. The greater moral decline—the abandonment of truth, of responsibility, of meaning itself—does not arrive announced. It seeps in through a thousand ordinary scenes like these.

I do not believe the UK is sliding morally. That would imply momentum still undecided. I think the collapse has already happened, and what we are living through now is the long aftermath—the strange sensation of being locked into a wild fairground ride. Once it begins, you cannot get off. Some scream. Some laugh. Some pretend the motion is freedom.

The descent continues, not because no one sees it, but because seeing is no longer enough to stop it.

The next morning, I wake at six. The early hour feels tranquil as migrating geese make their presence known in a dark sky. Why do they reflect their makers will; their instinctive wisdom still intact? I prepare for my daily Bible reading as I crave the stillness, craving something solid. The previous day’s thoughts linger, unresolved. Before opening the pages, I pray—not eloquently, not confidently—simply asking for comfort, for clarity, for truth that does not shift with the noise.

I turn to Isaiah, chapter one.

As I read, a question surfaces, not abstract but deeply personal: Can moral and social decline repeat itself? Can a society convince itself it is advancing while replaying the same ancient failures under modern banners? Can people remain religious, informed, articulate—yet hollowed out?

Isaiah speaks to a culture rich in ritual and poor in conscience, loud in self-justification and deaf to correction. It feels uncomfortably familiar. And yet, threaded through the warning, there remains an invitation—not to nostalgia, not to despair, but to return. To remember. To choose differently, even after collapse.

I close the book slowly.

The small signs matter because they point to something much larger.
The larger thing matters because, somehow, God is still addressing it.
And I am left wondering—not how far the ride will go, but whether anyone, anywhere, will finally decide within themselves to step off…

“Ah, sinful nation…
They have forsaken the Lord…”
—Isaiah 1:4

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“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

How Deep Is Our Love?

Fyodor Dostoevsky draws a sharp distinction between imagined love and lived love. Love “in dreams” is attractive and flattering; it costs nothing and never disrupts our comfort. We admire ourselves for feeling it. But it is not yet real. It is a Lake Wobegon delusion.

This is why I find Dostoevsky so compelling. His words are not cynical, but moral. He is warning that if our love never feels harsh, never interrupts our comfort, never demands sacrifice, it may not yet have become real.

“But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have deeds.’
Show me your faith without deeds,
and I will show you my faith by my deeds.”
—James 2:18 (BSB)

That insight becomes particularly sharp when applied to religious certainty. When certainty is fortified, questions sound like threats. Facts bounce off sealed doors. Even Scripture can be turned into a fortress rather than a window.

Yet there is one question that still carries a quiet, unsettling power because it does not argue doctrine at all. It simply asks for love made visible:

What did you do for the widow, the poor, and the fatherless child?

It is a probing question because it does not attack belief; it examines fruit. Faith loves to speak in absolutes, but Scripture repeatedly insists that love must be embodied. Faith without works is described as a corpse—present in form, absent in life. Words that bless the hungry while leaving them unfed are exposed as empty air. Belief that never stoops, never serves, and never costs is not belief at all—it is performance.

The biblical vision of faith is relentlessly practical. Divine expectation is distilled into a simple demand: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly.  Justice and mercy are not abstractions; they are actions directed toward real human need, often inconvenient need.

Those who cannot answer often reach for a familiar deflection: “the poor you will always have with you.” But this was never a permission slip for neglect. It was spoken in the shadow of sacrifice, not as an excuse for indifference. 

Throughout the prophetic tradition, care for the vulnerable is not a side issue—it is the measure of faithfulness. Worship without justice is described as noise God refuses to hear.  

And yet, there are quiet testimonies that never make it into sermons: a woman who opens her home to a child with nowhere safe to sleep; a church that funds recovery work for addiction; volunteers who sail ships of medical care to forgotten places; a man who spends his weekends delivering meals rather than pamphlets.

Jesus offered the simplest definition of discipleship imaginable: Apart from preaching and making disciples, he highlighted  feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned. He did not ask about affiliation, authority structures, or correct language. He asked one thing only—did you love where it hurt? And then he shocked everyone by identifying himself with the least powerful in society.

This is why works matter. Not because they earn faith, but because they reveal it. Faith is the root; works are the fruit. If nothing grows, the soil must be questioned.

So, when words fail, ask the question gently and without accusation. 

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The race is not to the swift…  For time and chance happen to all.”

Ecclesiastes 9:11 (BSB).

“Silent night, holy night… all is calm, all is bright.”

It was winter, 2010; close to the end of a very difficult year. I was returning from Oban, on Scotland’s west coast, weary from a speaking engagement. I am watching white darkness slide past the train windows. Snow had been falling heavily across the Highlands, thick and unrelenting, the kind that bends time and progress. Somewhere near Crianlarich the journey faltered and stopped for hours. Snow piled up on the rails and the time that passed was measured in patience. By the time we reached Glasgow it was close to midnight.

The station was hushed in that peculiar way only large places become when the crowds have gone—vast, echoing, half-asleep. Footsteps sounded louder than they should. Breath steamed in the cold air. And then, tucked away in a shadowed corner, I heard it.

A lone piper.

He stood almost hidden, the lamplight catching the curve of the pipes, the notes rising softly into the cavernous dark. He was playing Silent Night. Not loudly. Not for applause. Just letting the melody breathe into the space, as if the night itself had asked for it.

It was one of those moments that cannot be planned—only received. A gift given by delay, by snow, by circumstances that refused to hurry. The world slowed enough for wonder to slip in.

Silent Night itself began like that—quietly, almost unnoticed.

A century earlier, in a small village called Oberndorf, near Salzburg, peace was something people longed for but scarcely trusted. In that fragile stillness, a young priest named Joseph Mohr walked his parish with a poem in his pocket—a simple meditation he had written years earlier about the birth of Christ. No triumph. No thunder. Just calm. Just trust.

That evening he carried the poem to Franz Xaver Gruber, the village schoolteacher and organist. There was a problem: the church organ was broken. Silent. Useless. Whether mice or damp winter air were to blame hardly mattered. The grand instrument had failed.

So they turned to something smaller.

Gruber set the words to a gentle melody for guitar—an instrument of kitchens and firesides, not sanctuaries. And that night, by candlelight, the song was born. Two voices. One guitar. No choir. No ceremony. Just a fragile offering of peace.

“Silent night, holy night… all is calm, all is bright.”

I cannot help think that God moved these two men to bring comfort to these weary souls during that difficult time in human history. And to the world; for no one there imagined the song would travel far. And yet it did.

It passed from village to village on the lips of wandering singers. It crossed borders and languages, found its way into palaces and barns, into churches and prison camps. It was sung in times of joy and in the long shadows of suffering.

Once, on a frozen Christmas Eve during the First World War, it drifted across trenches—enemy voices meeting in the darkness, a brief and holy ceasefire born of melody.

And still, it comes to us like that.

In stations at midnight. In broken journeys. In unexpected corners of the world where the noise recedes and something gentler dares to speak.

The power of Silent Night has never been in its volume. It does not shout. It does not rush. It reminds us that Christ, the Saviour,  entered the world the same way the song entered history—not with spectacle, but with a child, a mother, and a night heavy with promise.

It began in silence.

And sometimes, if the snow is deep enough, and the train runs late enough, and the heart is quiet enough, we can still hear it.

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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.”

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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.

What a Magnesium Atom Taught a World-Class Chemist

James Tour, a professor of chemistry, computer science, and nanotechnology and the author of countless scientific papers, once shared a quiet but powerful insight. As he looks at something as ordinary as a leaf, he sees far more than green and veins. He is aware of the magnesium atom sitting at the core of a molecular ring, the flash of light that dislodges an electron, and the cascading reactions that begin the process of photosynthesis.

He knows that most people pass by without awareness of any of this hidden activity. Yet that deeper knowledge does not drain the moment of meaning. Instead, it intensifies his sense of God’s nearness. Understanding the science, for him, does not replace wonder—it multiplies it.

A gentle invitation to stop, look, and reflect.

Evolution vs. Faith: Insights from Dr. James Tour with Dinesh D'Souza #science #chemistry

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Dealing With Death: The Wabi-Sabi Paradox

The Japanese concept of wabi-sabi invites us to embrace the transience of life: the bonsai that struggles to root itself, only to shed its leaves, wither, and die. Such cycles of aging and passing are meant to be witnessed with a quiet joy—but we are not bonsai trees. Kobayashi Issa, the Japanese poet, wrote:

The world of dew
Is the world of dew—
And yet, and yet—

He penned these lines after the death of his child. In that trailing repetition—And yet, and yet—we sense his reluctance to fully submit to wabi-sabi. Something in him still longed for continuity.

We are born with the capacity to live a thousand lives. Our bodies are younger than our years; something within us remains youthful despite the passage of time. And throughout this journey we are accompanied by cells that hardly age. Deep in their sheltered chamber, the hippocampus, neurons hold our memories—ready to rise at a moment’s need. This black box is our soul, our identity, the essence of what makes us human.

Why would what society calls blind  "nature" grant us such gifts? Memories of laughter shared with family and friends, of children growing beneath our watchful eyes, of skills hard-earned and deeply woven into who we are. What is this memory, this faculty of innner life  that rests in the soul of humankind? It is difficult not to wonder whether we were made for an eternal purpose, something beyond the turning of natural forces, something in the great plan of the Creator.

“Do not be amazed at this, for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and come out—those who have done good to the resurrection of life…”

John 5:28,29 (BSB).

The World Speaks—Are We Listening?

When I was a child, I would go to the beach on the Island of Bute. I would see a heart or a little house or a car etched in the sand. Rough, childlike, but evidence that it never just happened. But modern science treats the universe differently: fascinated by its design and order, yet refusing to acknowledge the possibility of a mind behind it.

Science, at its best, is a wonderful gift. It has helped us understand nature, heal diseases, and explore worlds beyond our own. But a mindset has taken hold in many scientific circles: as long as God is left out of the explanation, any theory—no matter how stretched—will do. It’s as if science has become so determined to stand on its own that it refuses to admit even the possibility of a Creator.

A key part of this mindset is the rule that only natural explanations are allowed. That rule can be useful, but when it hardens into an unquestioned belief, it becomes a blindfold. It’s like trying to solve a mystery after banning yourself from considering one of the most obvious suspects. You can still discover many things, but you’ve limited yourself before the search has even begun.

Because of this, science answers “how” questions very well but struggles with the “why.” It can describe how stars ignite or how cells divide, but it can’t tell us why anything exists in the first place or why the universe is so astonishingly fit for life. Our world is set up with such delicate precision that even tiny changes in the basic forces of nature would make life impossible. Yet instead of considering design, some scientists prefer to imagine endless unobservable universes just to avoid that conclusion. It feels less like solving the puzzle and more like brushing the uncomfortable pieces aside.

This aversion to design is not always about evidence; sometimes it’s about commitment to an idea. Certain scientists have even admitted that they reject any explanation involving God before the investigation starts. That’s not an open search for truth—it’s a verdict declared in advance. It also leads to strained explanations, such as the belief that life, with all its intricate molecular “coding,” simply assembled itself out of random chemicals. Even people who aren’t religious can see how unlikely that sounds.

At the heart of this resistance is a very human problem. Acknowledging a Creator means admitting that we are not self-made and not the ultimate point of reference. That can be hard to accept. But when pride takes over, it blinds us to what may be right in front of us, like someone ignoring a compass while complaining that the map makes no sense.

The irony is that science itself hints at something beyond pure chance. The world behaves with astonishing consistency, almost like a perfectly conducted piece of music. And like a symphony, the harmony we observe seems to point to an intelligent guide behind it. Einstein once marvelled that the universe is understandable at all—that our minds are able to grasp its laws. Why should that be true if everything is the product of blind accident?

Science does not become stronger when it shuts the door on God. In fact, it risks becoming smaller and less honest, because it leaves out the very explanation that could make sense of the bigger questions. It is like trying to assemble a puzzle while refusing to use the centre piece.

The universe is not silent. It points beyond itself. Scripture says that the heavens declare God’s glory, and creation speaks of His handiwork. When science is practiced with humility, it can help us appreciate that beauty even more deeply. But when it refuses to consider the One who made it, it loses sight of the full picture.

Job’s ancient words remind us that creation itself teaches us about the One who formed it: the animals, the birds, the earth, the sea—everything around us bears witness that life is in God’s hands. Every breath we take is from Him. Real wisdom begins when we are willing to listen.

But ask the animals, and they will instruct you;

ask the birds of the air, and they will tell you.

Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you;

let the fish of the sea inform you.

Which of all these does not know

that the hand of the LORD has done this?

The life of every living thing is in His hand,

as well as the breath of all mankind.

Does not the ear test words

as the tongue tastes its food?

Wisdom is found with the elderly,

and understanding comes with long life.

Job 12:7-10 (BSB).

The Question No One Want's To Answer

I have a whole constellation of words flickering through my mind—dancing like the Northern Lights: dystopia-anxiety, eco-anxiety, Weltschmerz, mal du siècle, prolepse hystérique. And perhaps they can all be gathered under one new word: Anthropoklysis—the fear of humanity steering itself toward collapse.

I once lived in what was openly a Christian nation—the United Kingdom. Now it feels as though the day is coming when simply being a Christian will be treated as a crime. Brick by brick, the cultural foundations are shifting, and each shift seems to lean away from anything that affirms Christianity. The devil, as always, is in the details.

Let me frame a paradox.

There’s a moment in the Gospel—Matthew 19:15-18—where a young man approaches Jesus:

Young Man: “Teacher, what good deed can I do to assure myself eternal life?”

Jesus: “Strange that you ask Me about what is good. There is only One who is good. If you want to share in His life, obey the Commandments.”

Young Man: “Which commandments in particular?”

Jesus: “To begin with—do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness. Honour your father and mother. And love your neighbour as yourself.”

Now pause and look at your own life. Has anyone in your family ever been the victim of violence—murder, assault, rape, grooming? Have you ever felt the quiet violation of knowing other men imagine your wife or daughter in ways they never should, or other women looking at your husband in a similar way? Has your phone been stolen, your wallet taken, your home broken into? victimised by slander? As a parent, have your adult children lost their respect for you—maybe they never call, or perhaps you haven’t heard from them for years?

Go back and read Jesus’ conversation with that young man who simply wanted to be better.

Then ask the paradoxical question:

Why would governments, lawmakers, and the public ever want to oppose the very people who cherish these commands—people who long to live by laws that forbid murder, theft, adultery, lies, and dishonour?

Go ponder.

Scripture courtesy of The Voice Bible

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

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Sounds from Heaven: A Book Review

Sounds from Heaven reads like a doorway into a moment when an entire community found itself swept into prayer, surrender, and unexpected awakening. Colin and Mary Peckham don’t treat the Lewis revival as a distant historical curiosity; they let the reader hear the heartbeat beneath it. The book draws together the voices of those who lived through those years, and through their stories the island feels alive with a kind of spiritual electricity; ordinary people suddenly caught up in something far larger than themselves. I am reading it for the second time.

Chapter twelve lingers most strongly for me; how central prayer was to everything that unfolded. Again, and again the testimonies return to kitchens, barns, and small gatherings where a handful of believers prayed with a depth that carried both desperation and confidence. There was the memorable young man who would swear at the sheep and sheep dog and then felt an overwhelming sense of guilt and the need to repent.

Their prayers were not polished or formal; they were cries of people who felt the weight of their communities and believed God still listened. It's a feeling that is sweeping across Europe amidst Christians wondering where society is heading. 

The authors of Sounds from Heaven show how this persistent intercession became the quiet engine behind the movement. Meetings didn’t begin with strategy or spectacle; they rose out of worn knees and burdened hearts. In many ways, the revival began long before the first sermon, born in the hidden places where people grappled with God for their neighbours.

Through these accounts, the island itself becomes almost a character. People speak of walking across the moor or through a village and feeling an inescapable awareness of God, an atmosphere thick with conviction, hope, and a strange sense of expectancy. The revival seemed to seep into daily life: crofters praying while mending tools, young people weeping on roadsides, families awakened in the night with an irresistible urge to seek God. The effect was communal rather than individualistic. The transformation wasn’t simply a list of conversions; it was a shared reawakening, reshaping how neighbours spoke to one another, how churches worked together, and how people understood their own lives.

The authors don’t pretend the story was simple. They acknowledge resistance, misunderstandings, and the unevenness that always accompanies powerful movements. But they let the testimonies speak with a sincerity that gives the book its weight. There is something strikingly honest about hearing elderly islanders describe, decades later, the moment they felt the presence of God break into their ordinary routines. These voices give the book its warmth and its authority; they make it clear that this was not a manufactured phenomenon but an encounter that left permanent marks on real lives.

What makes the book memorable for me  is not only the events themselves but the longing they stir. It leaves me with a sense that revival is not a relic but a possibility, something that grows wherever prayer is taken seriously and humility replaces self-reliance. The story of Lewis is not framed as a formula to copy but as a reminder that God moves in places that feel forgotten and among people who simply refuse to stop seeking Him.

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