Personal Blogs

Why are some morals objective?

A Law Without a Voice

The queue barely moves as my wife and I  wait for our flight to Sweden to visit old friends.  Suitcases edge forward by inches, then stop again, wheels turned at slight angles as if they’ve grown tired of straight lines. A child sits on the floor, tracing the grooves in the tiles with one finger. Somewhere behind, a man exhales loudly, not quite a sigh, more a signal to anyone listening that time is being wasted.

Then the couple arrives.

They don’t rush. They don’t rush, they saunter then look at the queue with surprise. Then, they notice familiar faces near the front—laughter, “How are you both? Goodness, it must be about ten years?”  A brief pat of shoulders—and drift inward, folding themselves into that small circle as though they had always belonged there. It is done lightly, almost gracefully. But the effect ripples outward. Conversations stall. Eyes lift. A woman flabbergasted shifts her weight and looks down the line then looks at those around as if to say, “Did you see that?” No one speaks, yet something shared has been disturbed.

It is difficult to name what exactly has been broken. No rule has been written on the airport wall forbidding such movement. No official steps in. Still, the tension is unmistakable. It settles in the space between strangers, in the way people avoid looking at one another for too long.

We live as though this instinct requires no account of itself. It feels native, like balance or hunger. Yet it carries a peculiar authority. It does not present itself as preference. It does not say, I would rather things were different. It speaks more plainly: This is not right.

That distinction matters.

If such responses were only habits formed by convenience, they would bend more easily. They would shift with circumstance, soften under pressure. But they resist. Even when inconvenient, even when costly, they remain. A person may ignore them, silence them, argue against them—but not without effort, and never without some remainder.

There is a passage, written long before airports and council offices, that describes something similar. It speaks of those who have not received formal instruction, yet still act in accordance with a standard they seem to recognise. Not consistently, not perfectly, but often enough to suggest that the awareness precedes the teaching.

That idea lingers.

If our responses were the product of accident alone, it is difficult to see why they would carry this weight. Survival might explain cooperation, or even restraint, but not the quiet insistence that certain actions are wrong regardless of advantage. The person who steps into the queue gains time. Yet the reaction of others does not disappear simply because someone profits.

Perhaps this is why such moments feel larger than they are. A queue at an airport is not a court of law, but with an awareness that seems already present.

Consider the following quote from a book,

 “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.”

Ponder on that. If we are products of a blind evolutionary process, why would “nature” drive us towards a sense of justice? The book quote is from the Bible; from the book of Romans chapter two.

The Christian understanding does not treat this as an accident. It suggests instead that what we experience in these small disturbances’ points beyond them. That the quiet protest we feel is not self-generated, but received. Not invented, but recognised from an external source.

If that is so, then the unease in the queue is not merely irritation. It is a faint echo of something steadier. The dissatisfaction at unequal treatment is not simply preference. It is a response to a pattern that does not align with what we sense to be fitting.

And if such awareness is indeed given, then it speaks of a giver. Namely, God.

Note: 

The quotation comes from Romans 2:14. It suggests that although people of the nations were not given the Law of Moses, they nevertheless lived in accordance with its moral principles by instinct. The idea that God’s moral order is embedded within creation itself and can be discerned through human reason.

See Romans 2:14 Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.

Creative Masters: Pecksniff and the Shape of Self

“It is not for me to say how I have earned the love and confidence of my fellow men;

but I am deeply grateful.”

Creative Masters: Pecksniff and the Shape of Self

One of my favourite authors by far is Dickens. He was a keen observer of human nature—the good, the bad, and the ugly traits that so often live side by side within us. One character that makes Dickens a man after my own heart is his portrayal of Pecksniff.

There are some people who do not simply enter a room, they seem to become its centre of gravity. Conversation leans toward them, attention gathers almost instinctively, and before long everything begins, subtly, to orbit their presence. At first, nothing feels wrong. They are warm, articulate, often disarmingly moral in tone. They speak of goodness as though it were second nature. And yet, if you remain long enough, something begins to shift. The warmth thickens. The goodness feels arranged. What first appeared sincere begins to feel, well … performed.

It was Dickens who gave me the language for this unease. In Martin Chuzzlewit, he introduces Mr. Pecksniff—a man who does not merely value virtue but displays it, almost as though it were a kind of theatre. He speaks in elevated tones, as when he declares, “Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence…”—words that seem, at first glance, almost noble. And yet Dickens, with quiet precision, allows us to see beyond the words to the man himself.

What makes these lines so powerful isn’t just what they say, but how Dickens lets us see through them. On the surface, they sound admirable—even admirable enough to deceive. But placed in context, they become almost painfully transparent. The more Pecksniff speaks of morality, the less we trust it.

He tells us, “I am a humble individual, who is very sensible of his own shortcomings,” and somehow manages, in the same breath, to draw attention to his virtue. He insists, “My moral influence is very extensive,” with a seriousness that borders on the absurd. And perhaps most tellingly, he reflects, “It is not for me to say how I have earned the love and confidence of my fellow men; but I am deeply grateful.” Even gratitude, in him, circles back toward self-admiration.

Pecksniff unsettles because he is not entirely unfamiliar. He is not merely a figure of satire, but a pattern—one we recognise, if we are honest, in the world around us. I have met him in different forms across the years. Not always so theatrical, but present nonetheless—in conversations that subtly turn, in kindness that seems to require acknowledgment, in goodness that feels as though it is being quietly narrated.

One begins to notice it in the small moments. You try to share something—a thought, a burden, a quiet joy—and it is gently taken from your hands and redirected. “That reminds me…” they begin, and suddenly your moment dissolves into theirs. You are no longer being heard; you are being used as a passing reference point.

There is also the imitation of empathy. It can look convincing—concerned expressions, sympathetic tones—but it cannot remain still. It cannot sit with another person’s sorrow without reshaping it. True empathy requires a kind of self-forgetfulness, and that is precisely what is missing. Like Pecksniff, who can summon the appearance of feeling while remaining untouched within, there is emotion on the surface but not in the depths.

Then there is the quiet need to be seen. Goodness is not simply lived—it is, in some subtle way, displayed. Not always openly, not with trumpets, but with just enough light cast upon it that it may be noticed. It calls to mind that older warning against performing virtue for the sake of recognition. Yet here it is again, softened, refined, but still present.

Beneath all this lies something quieter still—an assumption, barely spoken, that one’s presence carries a certain weight. It appears in interruptions, in expectations, in the gentle resistance to being overlooked. And if such a person is questioned, even lightly, the response often reveals more than the behaviour itself. There is injury, surprise—sometimes even moral outrage. Dickens captures this perfectly in Pecksniff, who cannot conceive that his motives might be anything other than pure.

Over time, one begins to see that this is more than a collection of habits. It is a way of being—a life curved inward. Not dramatically, not with obvious arrogance, but gradually, subtly. A narrowing of attention that leaves little room for others except as reflections.

And yet, Dickens does not leave us comfortably pointing outward. Pecksniff is not only there to be recognised in others, but, more uncomfortably, to be glimpsed in ourselves.

That is the harder truth.

Because there are quieter versions of this in all of us—the desire to be acknowledged, the small satisfaction in being seen as good, the tendency to redirect rather than truly listen. These things do not announce themselves loudly, but they are there. And if left unattended, they take root.

So the answer is not condemnation, but attentiveness. To live with a quieter kind of honesty. To practise a goodness that does not seek to be observed. To listen without preparing to speak. To give without rehearsing the moment afterwards.

Pecksniff, for all his absurdity, becomes something like a mirror. Not a cruel one, but a truthful one. He reminds us that virtue, when performed, begins to lose its substance. And that the truest measure of character is not what we say, nor even what we believe about ourselves, but how we quietly, consistently turn toward others.

In the end, his grand declarations linger—not as wisdom, but as warning. It is not enough to speak of goodness. It must be lived, often unseen, and without applause.

The Mind Behind the Math: Why 2 + 2 = 4

Mathematics presents us with a quiet but profound mystery. Statements such as 2 + 2 = 4 are not merely useful—they are universally and necessarily true. They do not change with time, culture, or location. Whether in ancient Greece or the modern world, whether on Earth or in some distant galaxy, the result remains the same.

This raises a fundamental question: why are mathematical truths true at all?

They are not physical objects. One cannot encounter the number two in nature as one encounters a tree or a stone. Mathematical operations cannot be observed in isolation; they are not material processes. And yet, these abstract realities govern the physical world with astonishing precision. The same mathematical structures that exist in the human mind also describe planetary motion, atomic behaviour, and the structure of the universe itself.

This dual feature—being both abstract and universally applicable—demands explanation.

One possible view is that mathematics is invented, a human construction imposed upon reality. But this struggles to account for its consistency and discovery. Mathematical truths often appear to be found, not created. They confront us as fixed realities, not flexible conventions. A mathematician does not decide that 2 + 2 equals 4; rather, they recognise that it must be so.

If mathematics is not invented, then it must exist independently of us. But in what sense can something immaterial, timeless, and universal exist?

This leads to a deeper philosophical consideration. Abstract truths—logical laws, mathematical relations—do not behave like physical objects. They do not come into being or pass away. They are necessary rather than contingent. Such features are difficult to ground in a purely material universe, which is defined by change, limitation, and temporality.

A more coherent explanation is that these truths exist within a mind—one that is itself not bound by time or matter. If mathematical laws are eternal, universal, and rational, then the most fitting foundation for them would be an eternal, universal, rational source.

In other words, a mind.

This line of reasoning has long been recognised. The scientist Johannes Kepler described his work as “thinking God’s thoughts after Him,” suggesting that the order he discovered in nature reflected a prior intelligence. Likewise, Albert Einstein famously remarked on the deep intelligibility of the universe, noting the surprising fact that it can be understood at all.

From a theistic perspective, this intelligibility is not accidental. If the universe is the product of a rational Creator, then it follows that it would be structured in a rational way—and that human minds, also products of that Creator, would be capable of understanding it. The correspondence between mathematics and reality is therefore not a coincidence but an expression of shared origin.

This idea is also consistent with the biblical concept of logos—a term meaning word, reason, or rational principle. The opening of the Gospel of John presents creation as grounded in this divine rationality: “In the beginning was the Word.” The implication is that order, logic, and intelligibility are not secondary features of the universe but foundational to it.

Without such a grounding, the effectiveness of mathematics remains unexplained. Why should abstract, non-physical truths map so precisely onto a physical world? Why should the universe conform to laws that can be expressed in the language of numbers?

If, however, both the structure of reality and the truths of mathematics arise from the same rational source, the connection becomes clear. Mathematics works because reality itself is ordered according to reason.

Thus, the statement 2 + 2 = 4 is more than a simple calculation. It reflects a deeper consistency woven into the fabric of existence. It points beyond itself to the conditions that make such certainty possible.

Ultimately, the most satisfying explanation is that behind the order we observe is a mind that established it—a mind in which these truths reside and from which they derive their necessity.

In that sense, mathematics is not just a tool we use. It is a signpost.

And every equation, however simple, quietly points beyond itself to the One who made it so.

Today's Thought: When Nothing Adds Up

“Be careful when a naked man offers you a shirt.”
African proverb

Now I got thinking today about the problem of nothing. No, I am not sitting on rice paper emptying my thoughts to achieve ultimate happiness. I am thinking of another nothing.

Consider the universe with its stars, galaxies, and dark matter. Now imagine it compressed into a sphere no larger than our solar system. Press it further, down to the size of the sun, then to the span of the earth, then smaller still. A watermelon. An apple. A pea. An atom.

You are now holding an impossible weight in a vanishing space.

Take the next step. Remove it all. Not just matter, but space itself. Not just space, but time. What remains is not emptiness, because even emptiness suggests a place where something could be. This is nothing in its purest sense. No dimension, no duration, no foothold for thought.

The mind strains here. It reaches for an edge and finds none. Like a man trying to see beyond the horizon while standing in a closed room, it meets a limit it cannot cross.

Yet from this nothing, we are told, everything came. That is the claim. But in all our science, nothing does not produce something. It has no tools, no energy, no capacity. It cannot act because it is not.

So we face a quandary. If nothing cannot give rise to something, then the origin of all things must lie beyond the physical order. Beyond space, beyond time. Not bound by the rules that govern the universe, but the source of them.

The opening line of Genesis speaks with a calm certainty that cuts through the confusion:

“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.”

A simple statement, yet it answers the riddle. Not nothing, but a mind. Not chance, but intention.

So be careful when a naked man offers you a shirt.

In the Stillness of Morning

There is a moment before the day properly begins when the world seems to rest in its own breath. The streets are quiet, my mind has not yet been crowded by the noise of the day, and thought moves more gently through me than it will later. It is in that hour that I often find myself sitting to write.

Writers have long recognised something of this hour. Emily Dickinson once wrote that “the brain is wider than the sky,” and in the quiet of early morning one begins to understand what she meant. When the world is silent, thought opens in unexpected directions. T. S. Eliot suggested that even in stillness there can be a kind of movement — “the still point of the turning world.” In silence, something continues to move inwardly, though nothing outward seems to stir.

For me, writing often begins there.

What appears on the page in those early moments is rarely polished or carefully arranged. It is usually made up of the thoughts that rise naturally when a person sits quietly long enough to hear them — reflections on faith, memory, small observations about life, and the kind of passing impressions that might otherwise slip unnoticed through the day. Writers across centuries have done something similar. From the meditations of Marcus Aurelius to the letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, there runs a quiet tradition of turning inward, listening carefully, and allowing thought to take form in solitude.

Yet the stillness of morning carries a deeper value than reflection alone.

There is a wisdom in beginning the day before God. The Psalmist captures it with simple beauty: “In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly.” There is something profoundly right about that order. Before striving, before speaking to the world, the soul first turns toward its Creator.

Morning silence makes room for that turning. It is an hour when prayer can rise plainly and without effort. The mind has not yet been scattered; the heart has not yet been pulled in many directions. One simply brings one’s voice before God and waits.

That waiting is part of the holiness of the hour. The Psalm does not rush past it. The Psalmist lays his requests before the Lord and then waits expectantly — not anxiously, but with quiet trust. It is a reminder that before we act, endure, or attempt to shape the day ourselves, we are first called to stand in His presence.

Perhaps that is why the morning feels so well suited to writing as well.

In that silence, words seem to come less from effort and more from listening. What begins as prayer often continues as reflection. Thoughts gather slowly, like small stones found along a quiet path — some random, some wholesome, some searching, yet each carrying something of that deeply human moment when the soul is given space to speak.

Writing in such an hour becomes less about producing something clever and more about paying attention. Faith, thought, and language meet quietly on the page. The act itself becomes a kind of gathering — of memory, of reflection, of those inward stirrings that remind us what it means to be human.

If these pages hold any value at all, it is not because the thoughts are remarkable, but because of the hour from which they come.

The early morning remains one of the few times when the world feels unhurried, when prayer rises more easily, and when thought can unfold without pressure. It is a small and gentle space before the day claims its attention — a place where the soul can turn toward God, and where a few quiet words may find their way onto the page.

“Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.”

Luke 9:49

“It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man.”
Psalm 118:8

The Courage to Examine Faith

Faith is, at its heart, something deeply personal. It shapes how a person understands the world, how decisions are made, and where meaning is found. Yet even sincere believers sometimes find questions stirring within them. Doubts can appear quietly, almost uninvited. When that happens, many wonder whether such questioning is wrong—perhaps even sinful—or whether it might instead be part of a genuine search for truth and a closer walk with God.

People question their religion for many reasons. Some do so out of an honest desire to understand their faith more clearly and to be certain it truly reflects God’s will. Others, it must be admitted, may seize upon doctrinal disagreements as a convenient way to loosen moral restraints. But questioning itself is not the real issue. The deeper question is why we ask.

When my wife and I eventually stepped away from our religion, it was not done lightly or in haste. We wanted to return to the very foundation of our faith, so we began reading the Gospels and the Book of Acts with fresh eyes. We asked ourselves a simple but searching question: What do God and Jesus actually ask of us? The path was not easy, yet it led to a sense of freedom we had never known before.

For nearly thirty years I had lived with the feeling of being constantly occupied by religious demands. Life moved in a blur of obligations, leaving little room to pause and reflect. Even simple pleasures—a quiet evening watching a film or a day of rest—could carry a faint sense of guilt, as though something more important was being neglected. When we stepped away from that structure, a new kind of quiet entered our lives. I found time to read Scripture slowly and thoughtfully, without the weight of expectation pressing from the outside. It felt like breathing fresh air after years indoors.

Around that time I read Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick, a book describing life in North Korea. It revealed how people can live with two conflicting beliefs at once. Citizens are taught that their leader is almost divine, yet many quietly recognize the absence of proof. To voice such doubts, however, risks isolation or punishment.

The parallels with my own experience were unsettling. In the religious system I had known, questioning the structure itself was discouraged, sometimes strongly. The consequences were not prison walls, but they could still be painful—strained relationships, quiet distance, or social exclusion. Doubt was often treated as disloyalty, and leaving could mean losing much of one’s world.

Yet the Bible itself offers a very different example. In Acts 17 we read of the Bereans, who listened to Paul and Silas preach but did not accept their message blindly. Instead, they examined the Scriptures daily to see whether what they heard was true. For that careful spirit they were called noble. Their faith was not passive; it was thoughtful and searching.

When I began examining my own beliefs in that same spirit, many assumptions began to crumble. It was not a rebellion against God but a quiet return to Him. I wanted to know Him more directly—not through layers of human interpretation and tradition, but through the words of Scripture itself.

It does trouble me when people leave a religion and abandon faith altogether, sometimes directing their hurt toward God. Yet the Scriptures gently remind us not to place our ultimate trust in human beings. People can disappoint us; institutions can fail. God, however, remains unchanged. Walking away from a religious system does not necessarily mean turning away from Him. In some cases, it may open the door to knowing Him more deeply.

I often reflect on the question raised in the story of Eden: will humanity remain loyal to God, or will we choose our own path apart from Him? That question still echoes today. But the choice is not limited to blind loyalty to human institutions on one side or complete rejection of faith on the other. There is another path—the quiet pursuit of truth, guided by a sincere desire to know God.

So is it wrong to question one’s religion? I do not believe it is. Honest questions can refine faith, remove unnecessary burdens, and lead to clarity. As Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Truth is not something a believer should fear. It is something worth seeking with an open heart.

Toxoplasma gondii.

Letting Go of What Lives in the Mind

 It looks as innocent as an octopus. It's

It is a disturbing thought: something so small finding its way into the brain and quietly shaping behaviour.

Bitterness can behave in a strangely similar way.

A wound enters the mind; a word spoken in anger, a betrayal, an injustice, and if it is fed long enough, it begins to burrow into our thoughts. The memory repeats itself. The hurt grows familiar. Before long, resentment begins to influence how we see people, how we speak, even how we feel about life itself. The parasitic thought dictates their whole life.

Back in the day when I was part of organised religion, I gave several speeches as a visiting speaker in other congregations. The most requested talk was "Do You Harbour Resentment or do You Forgive?" This was a talk primarily for a Christian audience, the frequency of this talk demonstrated the tendency in humans to nurse other's faults.

History offers us the way forward in the life of Corrie ten Boom. During the Holocaust, Corrie and her family hid Jewish people in their home. Their courage led to arrest and imprisonment in Ravensbrück concentration camp, where her sister Betsie died.

Out of that suffering came a discovery Corrie would later speak about around the world: the power of forgiveness.

Years after the war, while speaking in a church, a man approached her. She recognized him immediately. He had been one of the guards at Ravensbrück. With quiet sincerity he told her he had become a Christian and asked if she could forgive him.

In an instant the past returned—the humiliation, the cruelty, the loss of her sister. Forgiveness felt impossible. Yet the words of Jesus came to mind: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

Silently she prayed for help. Then, almost against her own strength, she reached out and took his hand.

What she felt in that moment, she later said, was something she could only describe as God’s power—an overwhelming sense of release that washed away the bitterness she had carried.

Most of us know the quieter version of that struggle. Someone wounds us, and the mind returns to it again and again. We rehearse the conversation. We imagine what we should have said. Meanwhile, the other person may have long since forgotten.

The strange truth is that resentment rarely imprisons the person who hurt us.

It imprisons us.

Jesus pointed to a different path. When Saint Peter once asked how many times forgiveness should be offered—seven times perhaps—Jesus replied, “Not seven, but seventy-seven.” Forgiveness was never meant to be arithmetic. It is not a ledger of debts, but a freedom of heart.

To forgive does not deny the wound. Pain is real. Loss is real. Forgiveness simply refuses to let the injury rule the rest of our lives.

Corrie ten Boom once said that forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment. By forgiving, she did not erase Ravensbrück. She simply refused to carry the camp into her future.

And perhaps that is where forgiveness begins for most of us—not as a sudden emotion, but as a quiet decision. Sometimes it must be chosen again and again. Sometimes it is only a whispered prayer: “Lord, help me forgive.”

Yet we are not asked to do this alone. The same Jesus who spoke of forgiveness also practiced it from the cross, and the strength He showed there is the strength He offers to us.

So, it may be worth asking a gentle question.

Is something living in your mind that should no longer be there?

If resentment has burrowed in like a parasite, perhaps it is time to let it go. Forgiveness is not merely a gift given to another person.

It is freedom given to your own soul.

A brief reflection on the Gospel of Matthew 6:14–15

“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours.”

These words come from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, shortly after He taught the Lord’s Prayer. They reveal a deep spiritual principle: a heart that receives God’s mercy should become a heart that gives mercy.

Forgiveness here is not merely a rule. It is about the condition of the heart. When someone holds tightly to bitterness, it can close the door to the freedom and peace that God’s forgiveness brings.

Christ is inviting people into a different way of living—one where mercy flows in two directions:

• from God to us, and

• from us to others.

It can be difficult, especially when wounds run deep. Yet the teaching reminds us that forgiveness is not about pretending the hurt was small. It is about placing the hurt in God’s hands instead of carrying it forever.

Strangers Today, Neighbours in Eternity

Wasn’t it Gwendolyn Brooks, in Maud Martha, who once wrote about all this life and what shall we do with it? Bless her for asking.

We may have met before. Perhaps on the West Highland Way. Or that day in Dubrovnik. Maybe Warsaw or Berlin. It might even have been at a Horslips gig in Glasgow or the time I was in Boston. Perhaps we went to school or university at the same time. Who knows?

Or perhaps we have never met at all. What are the chances?

I found myself pondering this as I wandered through Glasgow yesterday. The streets were full of people. Some bright with a ready smile. Some carrying their burdens like invisible luggage.

A woman stood quietly debating which jumper to buy. For her husband perhaps. Or maybe for her dad. A man in a wheelchair asked gently for a few coins. In Waterstones a fellow was buying six books, moving with the certainty of someone who knew exactly what he was looking for.

I caught myself wondering about him. Gifts, or indulgence? Either way he seemed a well read soul.

And there it was again. That restless longing the Portuguese sometimes speak of, the ache to know the world and its people.

As the city opened around me, it felt like moving through a tapestry woven from unspoken stories. Each person I passed was a quiet universe. Complete. Complicated. Immeasurably rich. Yet all I glimpsed were small fragments. A glance. A gesture. The turn of a shoulder as someone slipped past.

It is astonishing how many lives we brush against without ever stopping long enough to feel the contours of their humanity.

Still, something in me thrills at these brief proximities. I find myself imagining the paths that brought each stranger to that precise moment beside me on Buchanan Street.

Were they running late? Thinking of someone they love? Wrestling with a decision? Savouring a small secret joy?

There is a gentle magic in the not knowing. A soft wonder that asks nothing more than attention.

I suppose that is the heart of it. The warmth I feel does not come from conversation but from possibility. The possibility that any one of these unknown faces might have been a friend, a confidant, a companion for a few miles or a few years.

We pass through one another’s stories like shadows. Yet the passing leaves an imprint, however faint.

It reminds me that the world is wide and still full of people I have yet to meet. People who might change the colour of my days.

As I walked, the thought settled into me with surprising tenderness. Even in a crowd we are not alone. We share the pavement. The weather.  The faint smell of food drifting from a stall.

We share the quiet truth that life is happening around us constantly and vibrantly. And we are part of it whether we speak a word or not.

Perhaps that is why strangers draw my attention. They represent the untold. The unfamiliar. The chapters not yet written.

They remind me that the world is not exhausted. There are still stories waiting beyond the bend in the road.

By the time I reached the end of my walk dusk had begun to gather over the rooftops. The city lights flickered alive and scattered gold into the evening air. People hurried past with shopping bags swinging and scarves pulled tight against the cold.

I watched them for a moment and felt that gentle ache again. Not loneliness. Something closer to a longing for connection, however brief.

Perhaps we have crossed paths somewhere. Or perhaps our worlds will never quite collide.

Still, the thought of you. Another unknown face moving through its own landscape. Another story unfolding somewhere beyond my view. That thought carries a quiet comfort.

In the great weave of things we are all wanderers. Drawn toward one another by the simple warmth of being human.

And then another thought rose. Soft but steady.

Perhaps the warmth we feel toward unknown faces is not only for this world.

It may echo something deeper. A quiet recognition that in the long light of eternity many of these unknown faces may one day become familiar.

After all, life does not end with our brief crossings on a winter street. With eternity in view there will be time enough to meet those whose names are written in God’s Book of Life. Time without hurry. Time without loss. Time to see one another as we were meant to be.

Christians have long spoken of the promises of Scripture as carrying both a present glow and a future one. A hope we taste now. A fullness still to come.

Paul wrote of the hidden wisdom of God. Of things no eye has seen and no mind could yet imagine, now made known in Christ. Again and again Scripture points toward a restored creation. A world made whole. A place where sorrow, death, and decay no longer have the final word.

If that is so, then every stranger I pass may be someone I will one day greet not with curiosity but with recognition.

The woman choosing the jumper.
The man in the wheelchair.
The fellow with six books under his arm.

And countless others whose paths brushed mine for a moment and then were gone.

For now we move through a world filled with lives known only to God. Yet the day is coming when loss will have no place. When separation will end. When the warmth of unknown faces will become the joy of known ones.

Beloved. Redeemed. Gathered together in the same forever.

Most likely we have never met.

At least not yet.

But in the hope set before us there remains a promise. Someday, in the renewed creation God is shaping even now, there will be life enough to meet, to know, and to rejoice together in the great story He has written.

“No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no heart has imagined
what God has prepared for those who love Him.”

1 Corinthians 2:9

Feeling Undervalued

Many years ago, I watched the film Fiddler on the Roof. One scene has stayed with me ever since. Tevye’s wife, Golde, suddenly asks him a question after many years of marriage: “Do you love me?”

The question catches Tevye off guard. In their tradition marriages were arranged, and love was rarely spoken about openly. To him, the answer seems obvious. He begins listing all the things he has done for her over the years: working hard, providing for the family, sharing the burdens of life. Surely these things demonstrate his love. But Golde is looking for something more than a list of duties fulfilled; she longs to hear words of appreciation.

Her question reveals something deeper. What she really wants is recognition expressed aloud—something that acknowledges the bond between them. The moment becomes tender and reflective, leading into the gentle song Do You Love Me? where the two cautiously explore feelings that had long been assumed but never spoken.

The scene captures something deeply human. We live not only by actions but also by words. A kind word can lift the spirit in ways that practical service alone sometimes cannot. Most people do not seek constant praise, yet sincere appreciation has a quiet power. It reassures us that we are seen and valued.

Unfortunately, the opposite can also be true. Some people carry with them a kind of gloom—an atmosphere of criticism or coldness. It may appear in sharp remarks, dismissive attitudes, or simply a lack of warmth. Such negativity can weigh heavily on those around them. Where appreciation is absent, discouragement often takes its place.

Gratitude, by contrast, has a remarkable effect on human well-being. It can increase happiness, strengthen relationships, and even lessen feelings of depression. One reason for this is simple: gratitude shifts our attention. Instead of focusing on what is missing or imperfect, it turns our gaze toward what is present and good.

Literature offers many poignant reflections on this theme. In Middlemarch by George Eliot, we encounter the quiet suffering of Dorothea Brooke. I recall cringing, I mean really cringing as I watched a certain scene play out. Dorothea is an intelligent and idealistic young woman who longs to dedicate her life to meaningful work and moral purpose. Believing she can contribute to something intellectually significant; she marries the scholar Edward Casaubon.

Yet her hopes gradually fade. Rather than welcoming her devotion and assistance, Casaubon becomes defensive and distant. Dorothea’s generosity, intelligence, and willingness to serve are not only unappreciated but subtly resented. The marriage becomes a place where her gifts remain largely unseen.

Her story reveals a quiet tragedy: the sincere desire to contribute, combined with the pain of feeling that one’s efforts do not matter. Eliot writes with deep sympathy for such people—those whose goodness is genuine but easily overlooked in the ordinary patterns of life.

In reality, many people experience something similar. Those who are thoughtful, generous, or humble do not always attract attention. Louder personalities or rigid social expectations can overshadow quieter virtues. Yet the absence of recognition does not diminish the value of those qualities.

From a Christian perspective, kindness and appreciation are not merely social niceties; they reflect something deeper about the way human life is meant to be lived. In Galatians 5:22–23 we read:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

Here kindness is described as something that grows naturally in a life shaped by God’s Spirit. It is not forced or artificial. It emerges from a heart that has learned to see others with compassion and respect.

A quiet thread runs through these reflections from Golde’s simple question, to Dorothea’s unnoticed devotion, to the biblical call toward kindness.

Gratitude does more than acknowledge a good deed. It recognises the dignity of the person who offered it.

In this way, a few sincere words can do something remarkable: they affirm the quiet worth of a human soul

Young people, life can be like The Arena in  The Hunger Games. Everything working against your success in life. Despite your best efforts you take three steps backwards for every step forward.

Psalm 42:5 begins with a question that feels painfully current:

“Why, I ask myself, are you so depressed?  Why are you so upset inside?”
Is that how you feel?

Let me say something to you directly.

Many of you are carrying more than people realize. You are growing up in a time of constant comparison, endless noise, and pressure from every side. Anxiety and depression among young people have risen sharply over the past decade. Researchers continue to report increasing loneliness, even in a generation that is more digitally connected than any before it. You are told to succeed early, to define yourself quickly, and to have everything figured out in a world that itself feels unstable.

That is not easy terrain to cross.

So, when the Psalm asks, “Why are you downcast?” it isn’t scolding. It’s honest. It gives you permission to admit that something inside feels heavy. The writer of Psalm 42 doesn’t pretend he’s fine. He talks to his own soul. He names the disturbance.

That’s the first step so many avoid.

But the Psalm does not stop at describing the problem. It moves to the remedy: “Put your hope in God.”

Some of you may roll your eyes at that. You might think that sounds like religious talk, disconnected from real life. But what the Psalm describes is not institutional religion. It isn’t about performance or public image. It’s about something intensely personal. It’s about you speaking privately with God. It’s inviting Him into your confusion, your questions, your disappointments, your fears about the future.

It is not nonsense to turn to the One who made you.

The Psalmist doesn’t claim instant emotional relief. He makes a decision. He anchors himself. He reminds himself that this low place will not have the final word. Hope is chosen before it is felt.

Some of you will take hold of that. Others may dismiss it. But I would urge you not to brush it aside too quickly. When everything else feels unstable, turning toward God is not escapism. It is grounding your soul in Someone steady.

So, I invite you, not to adopt a label, not to perform a ritual, but to have a real, private conversation with God. Speak honestly. Don’t sanitize your words. Bring the whole of your heart.

And then read Psalm 42 slowly. See how one honest question becomes a path back to hope.

Why, I ask myself, are you so depressed?
    Why are you so upset inside?
Hope in God!
    Because I will again give him thanks,
        my saving presence and my God.

Psalm 42:5

Note: verses quoted are from the Common English Bible (CEB) Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible

“He who throws mud loses ground.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

Lately my thoughts have drifted back to my parents; my adoptive parents. They were not perfect. At times I felt misunderstood, even treated unjustly. Discipline could be harsh. Yet that was the atmosphere of the time. The past, as someone once wrote, is a foreign land; its customs are not our own.

There comes a season in many young men’s lives when the world feels tilted against them. In that season, they often look backward, toward childhood, toward the home that formed them and wonder whether the roots of today’s struggles lie there. It is a natural impulse. When adult life falters, when relationships fracture, conscience troubles, confidence fades, or ambition runs aground, it is tempting to sketch a straight line back to those early years and declare them the cause.

Some grew up with distant fathers or demanding ones. Some have grown up abandoned by their fathers. Some knew mothers who were exhausted, emotionally unavailable or irrationally focussed on religious duty. Some households echoed with silence; others with conflict. When present difficulties arise, those memories can harden into explanations. And explanations can quietly turn into accusations.

If you anchor yourself in blame, you remain tethered to what wounded you. Blame feels decisive, almost moral. Yet it hands control of your future to the past.

There is a strange satisfaction in holding others responsible. It feels like action. In reality, it changes nothing. It keeps you circling the same ground, revisiting old trials in a courtroom that never adjourns.

Responsibility, by contrast, can seem severe. You may not be accountable for what happened to you. But you are accountable for what you build from it. That is the dividing line between being shaped by your history and shaping your future.

At some point, a man must come to terms with where he began—not by excusing what was wrong, but by refusing to live as its perpetual consequence. Some never make that shift. They become fluent in grievance. Their past grows larger in memory than their present is in reality. They wait for an apology that may never arrive, believing their freedom depends on it.

But freedom rarely arrives through someone else’s admission of guilt. It begins when you decide that no one is required to rescue you.

Growing older means recognizing that parents are neither saints nor villains, but flawed people doing the best—or sometimes the worst—they knew how to do. You can dissect their failures endlessly. Or you can ask what you will do differently.

The inheritance you received may be fractured. Still, it is yours to work with.

You can spend your strength pointing at the shortcomings behind you. Or you can become the steady presence you once needed.

Resentment burns hot, but it consumes without building. Responsibility burns quieter, yet it forges character. When you choose to create something better—not as retaliation, but as intention—you cease to be defined by reaction. You begin to act with purpose.

There is no applause for this decision. Often it happens privately, without witnesses. Yet the shift is profound. The moment you stop asking who failed you and start asking what you will do now, you reclaim the wheel.

Some carry the wounds of their fathers all their lives. Others become fathers in a larger sense—mentors, craftsmen of culture, founders of new patterns. They do not deny what hurt them. They simply refuse to let it be the final word.

The past matters.

But what you choose next matters more

Words That Hold the Universe

To read the New Testament is to step into a living conversation. It is not merely history, nor theology arranged in tidy columns. It is a witness. It is God speaking, and above all, God speaking through his Son.

This morning, I read Hebrews 1 in quiet meditation. why not read the beginning along with me,

On many past occasions and in many different ways, God spoke to our fathers through the prophets.  But in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He made the universe.

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His nature, upholding all things by His powerful word. After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.  So, He became as far superior to the angels as the name He has inherited is excellent beyond theirs. Hebrews 1-4 BSB.

Think of what it says. A Son appointed heir of all things. The one through whom the world was made. The radiance of God’s glory. The exact imprint of his nature. Mm! I cannot get my head round that. It stretches the mind in every direction.

The writer of Hebrews is not speaking about a wise teacher only. He is speaking about one who upholds the universe by the word of his power. We are not reading about ordinary humans trying to understand God. We are reading about powerful spirit realities breaking into our small field of vision. Our minds have walls. We reach the edges quickly.

Human beings like everything arranged in compartments. We try to place God and Jesus into neat categories so that we feel safe. How can God have a Son? How can Jesus be God? Was Jesus created? These questions circle again and again. Some of the language Scripture uses is what we call anthropomorphism. It gives human form to divine realities so that we are not left in total darkness. It is accommodation, not limitation.

One idea that may help us loosen the grip of our narrow thinking comes from modern physics: proton entanglement. In simple terms, when two particles interact at a fundamental level, they can become linked. After that, even if separated by great distances, a change in one is instantly reflected in the other. They remain mysteriously connected beyond what we can see.

Scientists call this one of the great wonders of modern science. It challenges our instincts about space, separation, and independence. Two realities can be distinct and yet profoundly united in a way that does not fit ordinary categories.

If creation itself holds such mysteries, is it really so impossible that the Creator could bring forth a person in his own image? One who shares his nature, who existed in relationship with him before time, and who could walk among us without ceasing to be what he eternally is?

We struggle because we measure divine life by human experience. Yet the New Testament does not invite us to solve God. It invites us to listen to him. Hebrews says that in these last days, God has spoken to us by his Son. That alone should cause us to take this seriously.

Reading the New Testament is not first about mastering doctrine. It is about allowing Jesus to confront us. Let him speak. Let him reveal who he is. Let him unsettle your boxes.

There will be questions. Some will linger. Some may never be fully resolved in this life. But if the Son truly is the exact imprint of God’s nature, then to read his words and see his works is already to stand at the edge of something eternal.

So read. Sit quietly. Read again. And allow Jesus to take care of the rest.

“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.