Personal Blogs

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
— Rumi

Stories That Trust the Reader: The Effaced Narrator

Henning Mankell, in his book Quicksand, describes Robinson Crusoe as the greatest book ever written because of its effaced narrator; the narrator seems almost invisible. Nothing stands between the reader and the story. There is no heavy hand guiding emotion or interpretation. Instead, a kind of quiet, bilateral relationship forms, just the reader and the life unfolding on the page. I have always been struck by that idea. A book at its best does not perform for us; it trusts us. It steps aside.

As a child I recall an image that is still present in my vault of memory. It was an old black-and-white film. A bearded man stood in a dingy dungeon cell, stone pressing in on every side. The scene unsettled me, though I did not fully understand it then. Years later I found the moment in The Count of Monte Cristo. The passage read:

“Dantès remained stunned; he did not move; he scarcely breathed. At last, he raised himself on his knees, and stretching out his hands toward the small window through which a faint ray of light penetrated his dungeon, he exclaimed, ‘O my God! my God! have pity on me!’ and then, as if exhausted by the violence of his emotions, he fell with his face to the ground, uttering a groan that seemed to issue from the depths of the tomb.”

The “faint ray” of light offered hope as I read it. This is the man before the transformation, still pleading, still human, not yet the Count. The stone, the faint light, the cry toward heaven: this is the buried beginning from which everything else grows. The image of him on his knees clarifies the whole novel. Before there is brilliance, there is darkness. Before there is command, there is helplessness.

When I think about the novel, I begin to understand why it has held me for so long, even if I have never been able to explain these factors clearly. But just as a geologist sees in a stone something I don’t see, so it goes when having studied English literature, we unpack as we read.

Perhaps what moves me is something similar to what Mankell describes. The novel never feels like a lesson. It does not tell me what to conclude about justice, revenge, mercy, or fate. It simply presents a life — broken, remade, and tested — and leaves me inside it.

Edmond Dantès begins as an innocent young man, almost painfully open-hearted. Then betrayal comes, swift and irrational. He is sealed away, not only in a prison, but in isolation so complete that he nearly disappears as a person. What happens in that darkness is not dramatic in the usual sense. It is quiet. It is interior. Years pass. Knowledge replaces despair. Patience replaces panic. Something inside him refuses to die.

I think that is where my attachment begins.

The novel is often remembered for its elaborate revenge, its disguises, its glittering society scenes. But beneath all of that is a simple question: what does suffering do to a human soul? Dantès does not emerge unchanged. He is sharpened by loss. He becomes controlled, almost superhuman in his composure. Yet the reader remembers the young man in the cell. We carry both versions of him at once; the buried prisoner and the powerful Count. That dual awareness creates intimacy. We know what the world within the novel does not.

There is something deeply compelling about transformation that is not accidental. Dantès does not drift into strength; he builds it. He studies. He waits. He disciplines himself. The prison becomes, paradoxically, a place of preparation. The very space meant to erase him becomes the space that forms him.

Perhaps that is what holds me. The idea that the worst chapter of a life does not have to be its defining one. That burial is not the end of a story.

And yet the novel does not glorify revenge without question. As the Count moves through his carefully laid plans, doubt creeps in. Consequences ripple outward. Innocent people feel the aftershocks. By the end, the book feels less like a celebration of vengeance and more like a meditation on restraint and mercy. Justice proves more complicated than anger first suggests.

In this way, the novel, like Robinson Crusoe, trusts the reader. It does not insist. It invites. I, the reader, am left to weigh the actions, to feel the cost, to decide whether the transformation I admired carries shadows with it. I feel so much going on and this is why I feel it is the greatest novel ever written

When I close the book, what stays with me is not the treasure or the intrigue. It is the image of a man who endures long enough to become someone new and who must then decide what kind of man he wishes to be.

Maybe that is why it has always been my favourite. Not because I fully understand it, but because it continues to work on me. The story and I remain in conversation. And perhaps that quiet, bilateral exchange — the one Mankell describes — is what makes any book unforgettable.

“Way maker... Light in the darkness…” 

(Sinach, Way Maker)

Guided Into Another’s Story

The German word Dasein means “being-there.” In the hands of Martin Heidegger, it became something far more probing than a definition. It became a way of naming the strange and searching condition of human existence — not merely living, not merely thinking, but discovering oneself already here: awake, aware, and situated within time.

To speak of Dasein is to begin with a quiet realization: none of us chose to arrive. We were not consulted about our birth, our century, our language, our bodies, or our frailties. Heidegger called this Geworfenheit — “thrownness.” We find ourselves already cast into a world in motion, into histories and relationships that began before we did. We awaken mid-story.

Yet Dasein is not passive. Though thrown, it is responsible. It does not simply occupy time; it interprets itself through time. We are creatures who remember and anticipate, who regret and hope. The past presses upon us; the future draws us forward. The present is never fixed; it slips even as we name it. Existence is not static but stretched — held between what has been and what is not yet. But who are we? Why are we here? Is God and Jesus approachable for those answers?

It is striking how this philosophical insight meets a scene in Scripture.

In Acts of the Apostles 8:26–40, the account unfolds quietly but with force.

A heavenly messenger tells Philip to go south — to a wilderness road. No explanation accompanies the instruction. No strategy. Simply a direction.

When he arrives, another prompting follows: “Go near and join this chariot.”

No argument. No forecast of results.

He runs.

Inside the chariot sits an Ethiopian official — powerful, educated, and yet spiritually searching — reading aloud from Isaiah. He voices a humble question: How can I understand unless someone guides me?

That question becomes the hinge of the story.

First, the Spirit moves toward seekers before they can fully articulate what they seek. The Ethiopian was already reading Scripture. Long before Philip appeared, God was at work. Divine guidance often connects threads already being woven in secret.

Second, obedience precedes clarity. Philip was not given the outcome in advance. He was given a direction. Meaning unfolded as he moved. Guidance is often less about information and more about trust. Step first. Illumination follows.

Third, the gospel crosses boundaries without hesitation. The Ethiopian was both a foreigner and a eunuch — someone positioned at the margins of Israel’s worship system. Yet he becomes one of the earliest recorded Gentile believers. The Spirit does not pause at social divisions. Grace exceeds the categories that contain us.

Fourth, notice the tenderness of the encounter. God does not redeem in abstraction. He arranges meetings. A specific man reading a specific passage on a specific road receives an answer. Faith here is relational, attentive, and precise.

There is something else — quieter, but revealing.

Philip runs toward a question. Not toward recognition. Not toward comfort. Toward confusion that longs for light.

That detail suggests something about how the Spirit often works — not primarily through spectacle, but through nearness, explanation, and patient presence.

In the midst of desert dust, there is water.

The Ethiopian sees it and asks to be baptized. Joy follows. Philip is carried away. The new believer continues on his journey — not with every mystery resolved, but with sufficient light to travel in peace.

The pattern remains:

God initiates.
We respond.
Prompting may arrive as a nudge rather than a map.
The Spirit works ahead of us.
Obedience often appears small and particular.
Joy signals that grace has taken root.

If you are considering inner prompting, this account offers gentle discernment.

The prompting here is not restless anxiety. It is specific and outward-moving. It leads toward another person. It serves. It clarifies Christ.

A simple question may help:
Does the nudge move you toward love? Toward courage? Toward clarity? Toward another soul?

Those are often the quiet footprints of the Spirit.

The desert road still stretches through every generation. And in ways we may not see, we are continually being guided — into another’s story, and deeper into our own.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Acts 8:26-40 VOICE - A heavenly messenger brought this short - Bible Gateway

“You cannot claim to be truthful until you have had the chance to lie.
You cannot claim to be faithful until breaking your word would benefit you.
You cannot claim to love your neighbour until loving him costs you something.”

Where Will You Be in 1000 Years?

I have often felt that I was born in the wrong place.

I don’t mean the small industrial town where I first opened my eyes. That was only a backdrop — brick, smoke, cold mornings, familiar streets. What I mean is something harder to explain. I have often felt out of step with the spirit of the age.

There is a way of living today that feels empty to me. People are quick to speak, slow to listen, ready to take advantage if it can be done without consequence. I see it in the news, in families, in business, sometimes, in politics even in some religions. And though I am far from innocent myself, something in me resists it. I feel as though I was meant for a different moral climate as many do.

Psalm 15 has always felt like a description of that climate. Go on, read it with me. You will find it her,

Psalm 15 VOICE - Psalm 15 - A song of David. A recurring - Bible Gateway

It asks a simple question: who is fit to dwell in that place God, the Eternal one, has prepared for faithful members of the human family? And the answer is not dramatic. It speaks of a person who walks uprightly. When it says, “He who walks uprightly,” it is speaking about a way of life, not a single action. To “walk” in Scripture means one’s daily conduct—the steady direction of life. To walk uprightly means to live with integrity, moral wholeness, and consistency before God. It suggests a person whose choices, habits, and relationships are shaped by righteousness, not convenience—someone whose life is straight, not crooked, and whose character remains steady whether seen or unseen. who speaks the truth from the heart.

To “speak the truth from the heart” means more than simply avoiding lies; it describes a person whose inner life and outward words agree. Truth is not spoken as a performance or convenience, but flows naturally from a sincere, upright heart before God. It is honesty rooted in integrity—where what one believes, intends, and says are aligned without deception or hidden motive. who keeps his word even when it costs him. A person who does not use others for gain.

When the Psalm says the righteous person “does not slander with his tongue” (or “does not speak evil against others”), it refers to someone who refuses to harm another’s name or reputation through careless, exaggerated, or malicious words. It is restraint rooted in love—choosing not to pass along gossip, distort facts, or speak with the intent to wound. This kind of person understands the weight of speech and guards it, knowing that words can either tear down or protect. It reflects a heart that values justice, mercy, and the dignity of others.

It is a picture of steady, ordinary goodness.

If there is to be a new earth — and I believe there will be — it cannot be filled with the same spirit we see now. A world made right would require people who have learned to live rightly. People who love their neighbour. People who can be trusted when no one is watching.

But that raises a hard question.

If those are the kinds of people who inherit that future world, why must they live so long in this present one? Why sixty or seventy years here first?

I have come to think of this life as a kind of garden where we are sent to move freely while God watches — not harshly, but patiently. In this garden we make thousands of small choices. Most of them seem ordinary. But slowly, those choices shape us.

You cannot claim to be truthful until you have had the chance to lie.
You cannot claim to be faithful until breaking your word would benefit you.
You cannot claim to love your neighbour until loving him costs you something.

Time reveals us. It also forms us.

Perhaps that is why we are here so long. Not because God delights in difficulty, but because character takes time. You see, if I was to say I am stronger than you could arm wrestle and settle the matter.  But what if I said I am more honest than you? It would take both our lifetimes to settle. Moral issues take time. Psalm 15 people are not born fully grown. They are shaped through years of quiet decisions — often unnoticed, often unrewarded.

When I feel out of place in this world, I am tempted to think I have been born in the wrong era. But maybe that feeling itself is part of the shaping. Maybe this world is not home — but it is preparation.

The new earth, if it comes, will not simply be given to whoever happens to be there. It will belong to those who have learned how to live in it — those who have practiced truth, mercy, and steadfast love in a harder land.

I do not pretend to be such a person yet. I am still learning. Still failing. Still choosing.

But perhaps these years are not wasted.

Perhaps they are the proving ground for the kind of people who can live forever in peace.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Matthew 6:10

KJV

Image by Copilot

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”
— C. S. Lewis

An iceberg shows only what surfaces; the mass beneath does the sinking.

A Tongue and Its Reckoning

He sat among friends and couples at a small gathering; cosy would be the way of things. Leaning toward the brother beside him, he asked “Who he consider the most attractive sister in the congregation?”

The room went still, like the Vikings had just pillaged. His is wife looked down in shame.

“It’s the same with people. A person full of goodness in his heart produces good things; a person with an evil reservoir in his heart pours out evil things. The heart overflows in the words a person speaks; your words reveal what’s within your heart.

Luke 6:45 (Voice Bible)

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

“Stranger, why do you not speak?
Speak — that I may see thee.”
— Walter Savage Lander

The Island of Arran from the North Ayrshire Coast

Speak — That I May See Thee

Like many early mornings, the coast summoned me. Five degrees below zero, the air thin and bracing, the beach washed gold by a reluctant winter sun. I stood at the shore and looked across to The Island of Arran on Scotland’s west coast, its mountain crowned with snow, steady and austere. Something about that view loosens memory. Faces return. Voices follow.

On that mountain, some years ago, I climbed beside a family from Israel. They were making for the summit to camp beneath the wide, indifferent sky. We fell into step together. It did not begin with theology or history, only with courtesy. A shared breath. A careful footing. Yet as the path steepened, so did our conversation. I had read the Bible most of my life and often wondered what a modern family from Israel would be like in the plainness of daily life. I found no abstraction that day. I found a kind, considerate and generous family; that is if generosity of time is a gift and I am sure it is. They made space for this stranger. They asked about Scotland and about the rhythm of my days which I reciprocated. I listened. I answered. We parted close to the top as I returned for the Ferry home. I returned with smiles warmed by more than the climb. That is how life ought to be.

Another ascent brought a Norwegian family into my story. I had once lived briefly in Stavanger, and hearing their accent felt like opening an old letter. Familiar cadences. Quiet warmth. We spoke of fjords and long winters, of the sea’s mood and the discipline of light in northern lands. In their company, nostalgia became a companion rather than a burden. Yet even as I admired their homeland, my heart settled again on Scotland’s west coast, the place where I am most at ease and most awed. Home sharpens when contrasted with another’s home. Conversation does that. It teaches us what we love without diminishing what others cherish.

Still, we do not need summits to meet good people. This morning by the shore, as Arran held its silent vigil, I found myself speaking with a family from Birmingham. A mother, a father, two daughters bright with curiosity and a father returning to his homeland on this west coast for a time. We spoke of the view, of reading, of their daughter who loved to read and write creatively. There was nothing monumental in my exchange with this family, no shared pilgrimage, yet it was rich. I walked away wishing I had known them longer. I wished not to intrude upon their time spent as a family. Some meetings are gifts precisely because they are brief.

But what draws people to the sea in winter. It depends who we are I suppose. I was brought up in the Maritime city of Glasgow where I always looked out to faraway lands. That’s why I was gifted a Grundig Satellite World band Radio in the seventies. A gift that helped me explore the world albeit unilaterally.  I guess Robert Louis Stevenson was drawn to the coast due to his father’s business of designing light houses which marked the writer’s career and destiny in many ways. But I digressed.

There is a peculiar virtue in these encounters, any encounter. A stranger speaks, and suddenly you see them. Not as a headline or a stereotype. Not as a theory. You see patience in the way someone ties a bootlace or offers their last caramel wafer or get all passionate when you ask them their favourite book. Words open the door, but presence lets you step inside.

When we remain silent, we remain unseen. Suspicion fills the space where speech might have been. Yet when we risk a greeting, when we ask and answer with simple honesty, something shifts. We discover that beneath accents, flags, and histories, there is a shared longing to be understood and welcomed. It does not require grand speeches. Often it begins with a remark about the weather, the climb, the cold. Now, my wife and I keep in touch with these chance encounters we have met in life's highway.

So, if you will indulge me, I shall lift the book resting at my side. In its pages I have come to know many people whose conversations have shaped centuries. There is one meeting in particular, unplanned it seemed, that changed grief into recognition and despair into burning hope. Two travellers on a road, joined by a stranger who listened before He spoke. You can read along with me if you wish,

Luke 24:13-35 VOICE - Picture this: That same day, two other - Bible Gateway

“Where, O death, is your victory

Where, O death, is your sting”

I Corinthians 15:55

BSB Bible

Cancer, Where Is Your Victory

It is a strange set of affairs.

Like a tearful old man who refuses to surrender to the years, I love to walk—to wander the glens and shorelines of Scotland, to breathe in the salt of the sea and the clean bite of Highland wind. The hills keep me young. The paths call to me. Though I carry a little extra weight these days, I am healthy in spirit and full of delight. There are still so many places I have not seen. I have never stood beneath the wide skies of the Outer Hebrides, nor travelled far north beyond Inverness where the land grows lonely and magnificent.

I once visited the Island of Islay on Scotland’s western edge, a place of peat and prayerful silence. Yet recent discoveries in my family’s DNA have tied me more deeply to that soil. I must go back—walk it again, this time with the eyes of belonging.

And yet, quietly, I feel the doors beginning to close.

Just over two  year ago, I underwent a battery of medical tests. When the consultant called me in for the results, the air in the room felt unusually heavy. The verdict was unwelcome: cells that had served me faithfully all my life had turned rogue. There was rebellion in my prostate, my pancreas, my liver. A quiet uprising in the citadel of my own flesh.

The consultant studied my face.

     “You seem very bravado about this,” he said, almost puzzled.

     “Oh, I understand what you’re telling me,” I replied gently. “But there is a young man inside me who has walked with me all my life. And I will still return one day after I close my eyes.”

It was not denial. It was not stoicism. It was something deeper.

I ask you, reader—though perhaps you do not need to be asked—do you sense that younger self within you? That companion who has moved with you through childhood, through love, through loss? The body alters, the mirror shifts, but something remains curiously unchanged. The inner life grows richer even as the outer frame declines.

As we age, that inner presence becomes more vivid. It presses forward in quiet moments. It whispers of continuity.

May I share what I believe about this?

Long ago, a wise king wrote words that have echoed through centuries:

“He has made everything beautiful in its time.
He has also set eternity in the hearts of men.”
— Ecclesiastes 3:11 (Berean Standard Bible)

King Solomon spoke of a wisdom given to him in youth—a gift from God. And in that line lies a mystery that science has never solved. There are many clever explanations offered for consciousness, for longing, for the depth of the human soul. Scholars have opened skulls, mapped neural pathways, dissected grey matter into slides and specimens. Theories are proposed, revised, discarded.

But no theory explains why eternity hums within us.

No scalpel has ever located the place where hope resides.

We have rich inner lives because we were fashioned for more than decay. We were built for eternity.

On the morning of my appointment, before stepping into that consulting room, my wife and I read a verse together:

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.”
— Psalm 91:1

After reading it, I turned to her and said quietly, “We are going to receive bad news today.”

It was not dread. It was recognition. A sense of being gently prepared. There are moments in life when scripture does more than inspire—it speaks. With over 31,000 verses in the Bible, what are the odds of opening the pages and finding the precise words needed for that exact morning? Some may call it coincidence.

I do not.

God has always spoken, but sometimes His voice is unmistakably intimate.

Cancer may tighten its grip. It may close doors. It may shorten horizons. But it cannot extinguish the eternity placed within the human heart. It cannot silence the young man who still walks the Scottish hills inside me. It cannot erase the promise of something beyond the final breath.

When Jesus told the thief beside Him, “You will be with Me in Paradise,” I often wonder what that landscape will be like. Will it surpass the heather-covered slopes of Scotland? The long light over Islay’s shores? The wild northern skies?

Surely—without question—it will.

Cancer, where is your sting?

You may trouble the body.
You may summon tears.
You may alter the calendar.

But you cannot defeat the promise.

The hills still call. And beyond them, something greater awaits.

“That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

Lessons from the Clydeside

Let me set the record straight. I was born on the Clydeside in the late fifties, where I woke each morning to the sound of angry hammers and neurotic welding torches; sounds that helped build massive vessels destined to sail the seven seas.

I left school at St Gerard’s Senior Secondary in Govan, Glasgow, at fourteen—probably—but I poked my nose back in occasionally, just to make sure I got my Leaving Certificate, because as far as I knew you didn’t get a job without one. To my knowledge, no one in my class ever went on to win a Nobel Prize for literature, peace, science or anything else. I suppose in today’s world we’d be called losers.

It wasn’t that we weren’t bright. It was that high school was chaotic. One year we broke for summer and returned for third year only to discover, after the holidays, that every teacher had been replaced. It was traumatic, like losing a family overnight.

I missed Mr A… , who taught us how to make fishing rods and took us fishing in the Clydebank canal, where the goldfish were enormous thanks to the warm water from the local Singer factories. And by the way, every man and his dog owned a Singer sewing machine back then, we weren’t a holy nation.

There was also the music teacher who made me feel Scandinavian while he played and explained The Hall of the Mountain King. And the English teacher who never really taught us English at all, but read to us Rob Roy, Treasure Island and Ivanhoe.

But I digress. What I’m trying to say is this: we yearned for learning—just not in the way it was meant to be delivered.

The Better Angels of Our Nature

I was standing in the supermarket tonight, surrounded by the ordinary music of daily life—the hum of refrigerators, the soft thud of items dropped onto the packing area, the polite impatience of a queue inching forward. It was the kind of moment no one remembers, because nothing remarkable is supposed to happen there.

Then it was my turn to pay.

I reached for my card and felt the sudden, sinking realization that it wasn’t there. I had left it in the car. A small mistake, harmless in theory, yet heavy in feeling. Embarrassment crept in first. Am I getting old? I asked myself, followed by the quiet pressure of holding up strangers who had their own lives to get back to. I apologized, already preparing to step aside and make the walk back, returning my item to where I’d found it.

That was when the first lady spoke.

“I’ll pay for it,” she said simply, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

I refused right away—instinct, pride, surprise, maybe all three at once. I told her no, no, it was fine; I’d go and get my card. I didn’t want to be a burden.

Then a second lady stepped forward. Her voice was gentle but firm—not demanding, not dramatic.

“Give me it.”

There was kindness in the way she said it—not pity, not impatience, just a quiet certainty that this was what she was going to do. In that moment, the awkwardness dissolved. The tension I hadn’t realized I was holding slipped away. I accepted, not because I needed to, but because refusing would have meant rejecting something human and sincere.

It was a small act. A package of rice. A few moments in a checkout line. And yet it stayed with me.

We live in a time when it is easy to catalogue what is broken. The noise of division is loud, constant, and exhausting. Every day we are reminded of cruelty, selfishness, and indifference. It can begin to feel as though kindness is fragile, rare, or naïve—a thing that belongs to a softer past.

But there, between the shelves and the scanner’s beep, kindness appeared without hesitation. No speeches. No cameras. No expectation of reward. Just two women who saw another person in an uncomfortable moment and chose generosity.

These are the better angels of our nature; not grand heroes or famous names, but ordinary people who carry kindness quietly and offer it when the world gives them the chance. They remind us that beneath the fractures of society, there are still good hearts beating steadily, ready to act.

I left the supermarket with my package, yes, but more importantly, I left with proof. Proof that despite everything, decency has not vanished. That compassion still finds its way into everyday life. And that sometimes, the smallest moments restore our faith far more powerfully than the loudest arguments ever could.

Bless you, dear ladies.

Words That Deserve Our Attention—Ubuntu

There is a word from Nigeria and other parts of Africa  that names something we are close to forgetting. Ubuntu.
It means, I am because we are.

Not as an idea, but as a fact. A recognition that the self does not stand alone. That our lives are shaped, steadied, and sustained by others.

And yet, it feels absent now.

Look around. Families are strained. Friendships feel thinner. Nations are locked into suspicion. The bonds that once held us together did not snap overnight. They loosened slowly, almost politely, until we woke up in a quieter, lonelier world. Something essential has slipped from our hands.

Once, life was built around community. People belonged to one another without explanation. Neighbours showed up. Needs were shared. Joy multiplied because it was witnessed. Today, life feels more like a private contest. “Take care of yourself” has replaced “How can I help?” We have traded we for me, and the cost is beginning to show.

Individual freedom has given us real gifts. Choice. Agency. Dignity. These matter. But when independence becomes the highest value, something deeper erodes. We forget how dependent we truly are. Self-sufficiency hardens into isolation. Strength begins to resemble withdrawal.

Technology was meant to draw us closer. In one sense, it has. Distance collapses. Messages travel instantly. Faces appear on screens across continents. And still, loneliness grows.

A screen cannot carry presence. A notification cannot sit beside you in grief. Digital applause dissolves the moment it appears. We are surrounded by noise, yet starved for nearness. Connection becomes simulated, not shared.

Work and money widen the distance further. People scatter for opportunity, leaving behind the slow work of relationship. Parents become voices on the phone. Friends become updates once a year. Life moves forward, but roots loosen.

Pressure does the rest. When survival consumes our days, relationships shrink. Exhaustion turns inward. Financial stress strains marriages, families, communities. People stop reaching out and start enduring alone.

The old gathering places fade. Extended families thin out. Neighbourhoods grow anonymous. Churches and civic spaces empty. Belonging becomes conditional, temporary, fragile.

Politics sharpens the divide. Listening is replaced by shouting. Disagreement becomes moral failure. We are taught to see enemies instead of neighbours, tribes instead of people. The public square turns hostile, then hollow.

On a global scale, the pattern repeats. Borders tighten. Compassion narrows. Faced with shared crises, we retreat. We protect what is ours and call it wisdom. Unity feels risky. Division feels safer.

So where does that leave us?

Rebuilding will not begin with grand gestures. It will start small. A call made instead of delayed. A neighbour noticed. A meal shared. Presence chosen. These acts seem minor, but they carry weight. They mend what abstraction breaks.

We may need to slow down. Relationships cannot be rushed or optimized. They demand time, patience, attention. The very things modern life trains us to avoid.

Technology does not need to disappear. It needs to serve. Not replace life, but point us back to it. Toward faces, voices, shared rooms.

Ubuntu reminds us of a truth we resist but need. No one thrives alone. We rise together or not at all. We are held by one another, whether we admit it or not.

The world feels fractured. But fracture is not the end. What has been loosened can still be bound again, if we choose to live as though others truly matter.

It is not too late to reconnect.

The question remains whether we will.

Scripture puts it plainly:

Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their labor.
If one falls, the other can lift him up.
But pity the one who falls alone.

—Ecclesiastes 4:9

Image by Copilot

“Every happy ending is a hint of home.”

Longing for the Ending We Were Made For

While searching for a film free of sex, violence, and the occult, we unexpectedly encountered something far rarer: goodness. The Indian film Bajrangi Bhaijaan offered not merely clean entertainment, but a deeply humane story—one that lingers long after the screen goes dark. It tells the story of Pawan, a simple, devout Indian man whose life is upended when he discovers Shahida, a mute Pakistani child, lost and separated from her family. What follows is not a tale of ideology or nationalism, but of costly compassion. Pawan’s journey to reunite Shahida with her parents is perilous, humiliating, and socially dangerous, yet he presses on, guided by conscience rather than fear.

The film’s emotional power culminates in a moment that feels almost sacramental. As Shahida crosses the border and realizes she may never see Pawan again, the impossible happens: she finds her voice. Her cry—his name—breaks through barbed wire, politics, and silence itself. It is a moment of pure joy, a vindication of love, and a reminder that some endings feel “right” in a way that transcends plot. We leave the film satisfied, even grateful. And then the question quietly arrives: why?

Why do such happy endings move us so deeply? Why do we crave them—not only in films like Bajrangi Bhaijaan, but in novels, myths, fairy tales, and the stories we tell our children? Are these endings merely sentimental escapes from a harsh world, or do they reveal something essential about us?

From the very beginning of life, human beings reach for joy. An infant cries until it is held, fed, and comforted. That instinct never disappears; it matures. As adults, we pursue happiness through love, work, creativity, justice, beauty, and faith. Even our appetite for stories reflects this longing. We identify with characters who endure suffering and yearn for resolution because we recognize ourselves in them. Their joy reassures us that happiness—somewhere, somehow—is possible.

Yet lived experience rarely mirrors the structure of a satisfying story. Life often resists resolution. Loss remains unresolved. Justice goes unmet. Illness, betrayal, and grief arrive without warning. If happiness is so fragile and fleeting, why does our longing for it remain so stubbornly persistent?

This tension lies at the heart of the human condition. We are creatures who ache for permanence in a world defined by decay. We desire fulfilment, yet everything we grasp slips through our fingers. C.S. Lewis observed that this mismatch is not accidental. He argued that when we find within ourselves desires that no earthly experience can satisfy, the most reasonable explanation is not that those desires are illusions, but that they were never meant to be fulfilled here. We were made, he suggested, for another world.

This insight resonates deeply across religious traditions, particularly within Christianity. Scripture speaks of a future in which tears are wiped away, death is defeated, and sorrow is no more. In this vision, our longing for happiness is not a weakness or a naïve denial of suffering. It is evidence—a clue embedded in the soul—that we are oriented toward eternity. We want joy because we were designed for it.

Stories like Bajrangi Bhaijaan echo this deeper truth. They remind us, however briefly, of a moral shape to the universe—a sense that love should triumph over hatred, that sacrifice should be rewarded, that brokenness is not the final word. Such stories awaken what Lewis called the longing for the “far-off country,” a place where goodness is not fragile and joy cannot be taken away.

Even stories that end in tragedy participate in this longing. When injustice remains unresolved or suffering goes unanswered, we feel not indifference but protest. We want wrongs to be made right. That dissatisfaction itself points beyond the world as it is toward a world as it ought to be.

Many explanations have been offered for our relentless pursuit of happiness. Evolutionary psychology suggests it aids survival. Classical philosophy elevates happiness as the highest human good. These accounts explain part of the story, but not its depth. They cannot fully account for the aching, almost homesick quality of human longing—the sense that joy is not merely pleasurable, but proper, as though it belongs to us by design.

That longing appears spiritual at its core. It is bound up with love, beauty, creativity, and transcendence—with the sense that we are meant for more than endurance. As Augustine famously wrote, our hearts remain restless until they rest in God. The restlessness itself is revelatory.

Real life seldom offers the tidy resolutions we encounter in films. Yet this does not render our longing foolish. On the contrary, it invites us to view life as a story still unfolding. Just as the darkest chapter in a novel often precedes its resolution, our present suffering may not be meaningless. It may be preparatory.

Whether one accepts the promise of eternity or not, the human hunger for happiness remains undeniable. It shapes our stories, animates our choices, and gives direction to our hope. If Lewis was right, then every truly happy ending is a signpost—pointing beyond itself toward a joy that is not imagined, but promised.

And so we keep searching for happiness; not because we are blind to suffering, but because joy is written into the fabric of our being. Perhaps what we are really seeking is not happiness itself, but its source. For every story, in the end, gestures toward a greater one: a journey from longing to fulfilment, from brokenness to redemption, and from time into eternity.

As Jesus said to the dying thief, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” That promise—quiet, undeserved, and final—may be the truest happy ending of all.

“I will place my law on their hearts and scribe them on their minds.”

Jeremiah 31:33

The Garden, the Warning, and the Way Home

Almost every story we encounter in childhood seems to follow a familiar rhythm. There is a warning, a choice, a mistake, and then—if the story is kind—a return home. Think of Peter Rabbit. He is told quite clearly not to enter Mr. McGregor’s Garden. The boundary is drawn, the danger named. Yet curiosity, defiance, or simple hunger pushes him forward. What follows is chaos: frantic chases, close calls, genuine fear. Peter pays for his disobedience with stress and suffering. Still, the story does not end with his ruin. He escapes, returns home, and recovers over a cup of camomile tea. Order is restored. The world, shaken, feels right again.

This pattern is everywhere. From fairy tales to modern films, stories tend to introduce conflict and then resolve it in a way that reassures us. Even when the journey is frightening or costly, we are usually led back to safety, justice, or understanding. That raises an important question: why do we expect stories to end this way? Why do happy endings—or at least morally coherent endings—feel so natural to us?

Part of the answer lies in the human instinct for right and wrong. We are not neutral creatures wandering through an indifferent moral universe. We hunger for meaning, justice, and resolution. The biblical verse Jeremiah 31:33 captures this instinct beautifully: “I will place my law on their hearts and scribe them on their minds.” This suggests that morality is not merely a social invention or a lesson drilled into us from the outside, but something written into us—something we recognize almost before we can explain it. When a story restores balance, it resonates with something already alive within us.

This inner moral compass is especially important when we consider how stories shape the young. When parents, teachers, or storytellers offer warnings—like the warning Peter Rabbit receives—they are doing more than issuing rules. They are preparing children for reality. Stories become rehearsal spaces for life. The garden is temptation. Mr. McGregor is consequence. The escape is mercy. Through narrative, children learn that choices matter, that actions have weight, and that the world responds to what we do. In this sense, stories gently introduce them to life’s dangers without exposing them fully to harm.

Yet not all stories offer such clean resolutions. The rise of the anti-hero reflects a growing awareness that life is complicated. Anti-heroes do not always make the right choices, and they do not always return home unscathed. Their victories are partial; their failures linger. These stories are valuable too, perhaps increasingly so, because they mirror the moral ambiguity of real life. They teach that good intentions can coexist with bad actions, and that consequences are not always easily undone. If heroic tales show us the ideal moral arc, anti-hero stories show us the struggle of living within it.

Together, these narratives serve a larger purpose. Stories are not just distractions or diversions; they are moral instruments. They shape conscience, imagination, and expectation. They help young minds—and older ones, too—grapple with temptation, responsibility, guilt, and hope. Whether through the frightened escape of a rabbit or the troubled path of an anti-hero, stories warn us, guide us, and remind us that choices carve paths.

In the end, perhaps that is why we keep telling these stories. We want to believe that wandering into the wrong garden is not the end of the world, that fear can teach us, and that home is still possible. And if we are careful, if we listen to the warnings woven into the tales, we may yet shape lives—and endings—that feel, if not perfect, at least meaningful.

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