“God whispers to us in our pleasures....”

— C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Such Things Do Not Occur in a Mindless Universe

Who are your favourite characters in literature and film? Perhaps Bruno from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, Oscar Schindler in Schindler’s List, Gandalf the Grey in The Lord of the Rings, Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, Abbé Faria in The Count of Monte Cristo, Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, or even Othello in Shakespeare’s play of the same name?

Did you notice the common trait they share? They are all embodiments of kindness. But why are we naturally drawn to characters like these? Why don’t we gravitate towards characters like Amon Göth from Schindler’s List, Fernand de Morcerf from The Count of Monte Cristo, or Iago from Othello?

The answer lies in a profound force that influences us all—a benign force known as the Law of Universal Justice. As Martin Luther King, Jr. eloquently stated, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." This principle is deeply connected to our attraction to noble characters. If we were merely biological entities, driven solely by survival instincts in a cold, indifferent universe, concepts like love, kindness, and self-sacrifice wouldn’t exist. Good and evil would lose their meanings entirely. We wouldn’t be drawn to moral characters because morality itself would be irrelevant. Good and evil can only exist in a moral universe.

But if goodness exists, how do we define it? Why do we feel compelled to do good if our existence is merely a result of chance, dictated by the "survival of the fittest"? Consider how one person gives generously and finds happiness, while another inflicts pain and suffers from a guilty conscience. The difference lies in that gentle nudge we all feel—a natural inclination toward what’s right.

Interestingly, science has also uncovered the therapeutic value of random acts of kindness, contrasting sharply with the outcomes of random acts of evil. So, why do we lean toward kindness? Perhaps it’s because we are inherently designed to do so.

“The primary goal of all institutions and subcultures is self-preservation.”

Daniel Taylor, The Myth of Certainty

Spiritual Trauma within the Flock of Christ 

Further reading: Langberg’s account of her journey; her books on trauma, abuse and power.

Many young people today have been fed two great lies. First, there is no objective morality. And two, because society deny the existance of God, the young grow up with a concept of oblivion.

In Light of Eternity

“He has made everything beautiful in its time.

 He has also set eternity in the hearts of men,

 yet they cannot fathom the work that God has done from beginning to end. "

 Ecclesiastes 3:12.

I was born and raised in the maritime city of Glasgow. Inevitably, it looks outward. And yet, where we travel shapes who we are inwardly. Now, I am crossing over to the Island of Bute on the MV Bute, reading about the fascinating philosophical thought experiment known as the Ship of Theseus, first proposed by Plutarch.

Theseus, the  mythological hero, sailed from Greece to slay the Minotaur. After completing his task, he returned to Athens and left his ship to decay. Over time, carpenters gradually replaced each plank of the ship. This raises a question: which ship is the Ship of Theseus—the newly restored one or the old parts rotting on the beach?

Our bodies are not unlike that paradox. Red blood cells form, embark on an arduous journey through the grand rapids of our arteries, veins, and capillaries—facing proportionally life-threatening obstacles—only to sail into oblivion after their two-month voyage. Skin cells decay, leading to weakening avalanches and shifting continental plates. They fall from their plateaus, aided by cascading water, gravitating toward terminal, anticlockwise whirlpools before their second day ends. Estimates vary, but the body replaces itself every seven to ten years. Like Plutarch’s thought experiment, this raises questions of identity and thoughts of eternity as I ponder the body’s self-renewal mechanism.

But here lies the paradox: neurons, those cells that drive the brain, remain with us, in some cases, for life. Though I am advancing in years, there’s still a young man living inside me. I can call him up at any time to visit the places he once visited, meet the people he met, and relive the joys he experienced. This convinces me of an action God took before I was born: setting eternity in my heart.

There is something profoundly beautiful in understanding that while our physical form undergoes continuous change, the essence of who we are remains anchored in something eternal. As I stand on the deck of the MV Bute, the wind tousling my hair and the vast expanse of the sea stretching out before me, I am reminded of the eternal nature that God has set within us. The same sense of eternity that inspired the ancient philosophers to ponder the Ship of Theseus and the same eternal truth that we find in the Scriptures.

In this ever-changing world, the constancy of God’s creation and His eternal purpose for our lives offer a reassuring anchor. Our journeys, much like those of Theseus and his ship, involve renewal and transformation. Yet, in each phase, there is a beauty that God has ordained, a purpose that transcends time.

Reflecting on these thoughts, I find peace in the knowledge that while the external may change, the core of our being is eternally held by God. This realization brings a profound sense of wonder and gratitude for the life I have been given, and for the eternal journey that lies ahead.

Time, Eternity and Cancer

Tomorrow, which we have always taken  granted, becomes uncertain with a fatal diagnosis.  And questions about God for some, become immediate and deeply personal.

Recently I wrote about cancer and time, encouraging those facing serious illness to turn to God while there is still time. But that raises a tender question: what if there is very little time left? What of the person who has lived most of life without God and only begins to seek Him when death is close?  Does God hear the prayer of someone who turns to Him at the very edge of life?

Luke's Gospel gives us a remarkable answer. Jesus is dying on the cross, and beside Him hangs a criminal who knows that he too is dying. We are not privy to all the conversation but it goes without saying that there is no time for this man to rebuild his life, undo his wrongs or spend years demonstrating the sincerity of his repentance. He has nothing left to offer except his plea: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus replies, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:42–43).

There may be no more comforting deathbed conversation in Scripture. Jesus does not tell the man that he should have come sooner. He does not ask him to prove himself, nor does He say that too much of his life has been wasted. The man turns to Christ with the little time he has left, and Christ receives him.

This goes to the heart of Christian grace. The person who has followed Christ for sixty years needs mercy, and the person who turns to Him with sixty minutes remaining needs mercy. Neither earns salvation by accumulating enough goodness. Both depend upon Christ. This is not a reason to postpone turning to God, for none of us is promised tomorrow. But there is a great difference between saying, “Do not wait,” and telling someone who has waited, “It is now too late.” The thief on the cross should make us very reluctant ever to say the latter.

The Psalms reveal the same tenderness in the character of God: “The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them,” Those words sound especially precious beside a hospital bed, because there may be several broken hearts in that room. There is the person whose body is failing, but also the husband or wife watching someone deeply loved grow weaker, and the son or daughter wondering how life will continue without Mum or Dad.

There may also be an unspoken fear: I don't know what they believe. We never really talked about God. What if they have left it too late? Here we need both humility and hope. We cannot see into another person's heart, particularly during the final hours of life. Illness, medication or weakness may eventually make conversation impossible, but inability to speak to us does not necessarily mean that nothing is happening within.

God does not require an eloquent prayer. The thief managed only, “Jesus, remember me.” Elsewhere, the tax collector in Jesus' parable prayed, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” A few faltering words can be a prayer. We should never claim to know that someone turned to Christ when we do not know, but neither should we assume that because we heard no prayer, no prayer was made. There are movements of the human heart that may be known only to that person and to God.

For someone already bereaved, that distinction matters. A person you loved died without giving you the assurance you desperately wanted.  You did not know every thought or witness every inward moment of those final hours. God did. We can entrust those we love to the One who knew them completely and whose mercy is greater than ours.

For those presently caring for someone with cancer or another terminal illness, this hope may also give us courage to speak gently about Christ. A hospital room need not become a pulpit. Sometimes love simply sits, listens and holds a hand. But we need not be afraid to tell someone that they can still speak to God. They do not need religious vocabulary or years in which to repair their past. They can simply turn to Him: Jesus, I need you. Forgive me. Have mercy on me. Remember me. These are not magic words, but the simple language of a heart turning towards Christ and in turn, turning towards righteousness.

Cancer can take an astonishing amount from a human being: strength, independence, plans and sometimes years everyone assumed were still to come. Yet it cannot, by itself, place someone beyond the reach of Christ. So yes, turn to God while there is time, and speak of Him gently to those you love while you have the opportunity. But when time has become desperately short, remember the conversation on the cross.

A dying man had no future to offer Jesus, no time to establish a better record and no years left to prove his faith. He simply turned towards Christ and said, “Jesus, remember me.”

And Christ did not say, “Too late.”

He said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

Sometimes grace comes when a lifetime still lies ahead. Sometimes it meets a person in life's final hours. Our hope is not in how much time remains, but in the mercy of the Christ to whom we turn. For the dying person, and for the broken-hearted family keeping watch beside the bed, that is a hope worth holding onto.

There are are many other passages with the same heartbeat:

• Psalm 50:15 — “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor Me.

• Psalm 107:10–16 — People are pictured in darkness and the shadow of death because of their rebellion. Then comes the turning point: “Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble, and He saved them from their distress.

• Isaiah 55:6–7 — “Seek the LORD while He may be found; call on Him while He is near.” The wicked person is invited to forsake his ways and return to God, “for He will freely pardon.”

• Luke 18:13–14 — The tax collector is unwilling even to lift his eyes to heaven: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” Jesus says that man went home justified.

• John 6:37 — Jesus gives one of the strongest assurances in the New Testament: “Everyone the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never drive away.”

Scripture quotations are from the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain.

 Written by Jim, with editorial assistance from ChatGPT.

“If the brief meeting of a stranger can awaken in us a longing that this world has no time to satisfy, perhaps we were made for a place where no good meeting ends in goodbye.”

Where No Good Meeting Ends in Goodbye

My wife and I were wandering around Princess Square in Glasgow with that pleasant little problem familiar to anyone surrounded by restaurants: too much choice. We looked at one menu, then another. Perhaps Italian? Maybe something light? Possibly somewhere we had eaten before? All the while, I am balancing these ordinary decisions with the reality of pancreatic cancer, so choosing what and where to eat can sometimes feel like a decision of rather more than ordinary importance.

Then, quite unexpectedly, lunch ceased to be the most interesting thing happening.

We met a family from Lahore in Pakistan who were visiting Glasgow. There was nothing dramatic about the encounter, no great event to report; we simply began talking. Yet almost immediately there was a warmth about them that caught my attention, one of those difficult-to-define moments when strangers somehow cease to feel entirely strange.

I have a custom when I leave home each day: I often pray that God will bring someone across my path. I realise that may sound unusual to some people, but I have done it for years, and remarkably often someone appears. Not necessarily someone who needs anything from me, nor someone to whom I have something profound to say. Sometimes it is simply another human being whom, for reasons I cannot entirely explain, I am glad to have met. This family was like that.

What particularly moved me were the son and daughter. They were respectful and attentive while we spoke. There was none of that sense that the younger members of the family were merely waiting impatiently for the adults to finish. They were present; they listened and participated in that quiet way. When eventually we parted, every member of the family shook our hands.

It was such a small thing: a handshake, a smile, a few words exchanged between people whose lives, until that moment, had been unfolding thousands of miles apart. Yet something had happened. For a few minutes, the categories by which we so often arrange humanity became unimportant. Pakistani and Scottish, visitor and resident, Muslim and Christian perhaps; whatever our differences might have been, they did not need to disappear for us to recognise something more fundamental in one another. Here was another family: parents who loved their children, young people being raised with courtesy and dignity, human beings making their way through the strange and beautiful business of life, just as we were.

Then came the part of such encounters that has always troubled me a little. We said goodbye, they walked one way through Princess Square and we walked another, and within moments the crowd had swallowed them up. It is one of the peculiar sorrows of human life that we can sometimes feel an immediate affection for people we are almost certain never to see again. For a few minutes two stories touch, and then they separate.

They will return home carrying their memories of Scotland, while my wife and I will return to our own life. Their children will grow older. Years will pass. There will be birthdays and joys, disappointments and discoveries, marriages perhaps, children perhaps, and all the unexpected turns that make up a human life. Whole chapters will be written in their story of which we shall know absolutely nothing. And yet, for those few minutes in Glasgow, our stories crossed.

Why should that affect us? Why should someone who was a stranger only minutes before leave behind a faint sense of loss when they disappear? Perhaps there is something within us that protests against the brevity of human connection. We are forever meeting people for whom there is not enough time. We discover a kindness just as the conversation must end. We glimpse something admirable in another person just as the train arrives, the holiday finishes, the meal ends, or somebody glances at the clock and says, “Well, we must be going.” In a curious way, we spend our lives beginning relationships that time does not allow us to finish.

For those of us who believe in God, there is another possibility; some encounters are not meant to be possessed or prolonged; they are simply meant to be received. A stranger does not have to become a lifelong friend for the meeting to have meaning. God may occasionally allow two human lives to touch briefly so that each might carry away a little evidence of the goodness in the other.

That family from Lahore gave me such a gift in Princess Square. They reminded me that goodness does not belong to one nationality, one culture or one corner of the earth. We encounter it in parents and children, in courtesy and attentiveness, in hospitality and humour, and in the simple willingness to stop and recognise the humanity of someone whose life may be very different from our own.

I am convinced that strange sadness we sometimes feel when good people disappear into the crowd is telling us something. If the brief meeting of a stranger can awaken in us a longing that this world has no time to satisfy, perhaps we were made for a place where no good meeting ends in goodbye.

I cannot know whether I will ever see that family again, and in the ordinary course of things I probably will not. But my belief  has taught me to be careful with the word never. There is something wonderfully unfinished about the Christian understanding of human life: goodbye need not necessarily mean the end of the story.

For now, I am simply grateful that among all those people moving through Princess Square that day, our paths crossed. My wife and I had gone in looking for somewhere to eat, studying menus and wondering what might satisfy our hunger. Yet we came away having received something that was never written on any menu: a brief encounter with strangers who, for a few precious minutes, did not feel like strangers at all.

Written by Jim, with editorial assistance from ChatGPT.

“For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”

— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (1923)

Dear Gen Z and Gen Alpha: A Letter to You

My dears,

You are entering a changing world, and much of what you will grow up considering normal is anything but. I do not say this because I want you to fear the world or become suspicious of everyone in it. There is enormous goodness in people, and I hope your lives will be filled with friendship, laughter, discovery and love. But I have lived long enough to know that appearances can deceive, that accepted ideas are not necessarily true, and that a crowd can be confidently travelling in the wrong direction. Because I love the human family, I want to leave you with a few things that may help you find your way.

Learn first to love truth, even when truth is inconvenient. You will live among powerful forces competing for your attention and allegiance, and sometimes truth will be exchanged for power, money, influence or approval and such traits can even be cultivated in a family. Lies are not always ugly things that announce themselves as lies; some arrive beautifully dressed, repeated by intelligent people and made attractive by those who stand to benefit from them. When an idea is repeated often enough, it begins to feel familiar, and familiarity can easily be mistaken for truth. So, remain curious. Ask questions, examine motives and evidence, and never surrender your conscience merely because everyone around you appears to agree.

Learn to observe people in the same way, but without becoming cynical about them. Someone may tell you that they love you, and perhaps they sincerely believe they do, but words alone cannot tell you what love is. Watch how people behave when there is nothing to be gained, how they treat those who cannot advance them, whether they respect your boundaries, whether they tell the truth when truth costs them something, and whether they desire what is genuinely good for you rather than simply what they want from you. Love reveals itself gradually in conduct, patience, loyalty, sacrifice and kindness.

This becomes especially important when you begin to fall in love, because attraction has a wonderful ability to interfere with clear eyesight. The person who attracts us can appear almost perfect for a while, and feelings that are intense can easily be mistaken for feelings that are deep. Enjoy the beauty of falling in love, but allow time to reveal character. The wider culture will have much to say about sex and relationships, and films, television, advertising and entertainment will quietly present certain ways of living as ordinary and inevitable. Remember that repetition is not evidence of wisdom. Save sexual intimacy for the person you marry, not because sexuality is something shameful, but precisely because it is something precious. Your body has dignity, as does the body of the person you love. Never allow yourself to believe that you must give something intimate away in order to prove that you are mature, desirable or liberated. Learn the difference between being desired and being loved, because although the two can feel remarkably similar at first, time usually reveals which one you were offered.

Time is a good teacher in other areas of life too. I hope you receive an excellent education, read widely, remain curious and never become frightened of an honest question. But do not make the mistake of believing that education automatically produces wisdom. Knowledge can teach us how something works, while wisdom asks what we should do with that knowledge. It is true that a tomato is a fruit, but it is wise not to ad it into a fruit salad. A person may possess qualifications enough to cover a wall and still make a terrible ruin of his life, while someone with little formal education may possess an extraordinary understanding of human nature. Seek out older and wiser people whose lives have produced good fruit. Ask them about their successes, but ask them about their mistakes as well. There is a great deal of wisdom sitting quietly in elderly people whom the hurried world has simply stopped asking.

The same humility will protect you when it comes to money. There is an old saying that I hope will make you smile and, more importantly, that you will remember: if a naked man offers you a shirt, be suspicious. Behind the humour lies a serious principle. Before accepting advice, consider the condition and motives of the person giving it. When somebody offers you an extraordinary financial opportunity, ask what they stand to gain from your decision. When you are promised easy money, ask where that money is really coming from, and when somebody insists that you must act immediately, wonder why you are not being given time to think. Greed and urgency have made fools of many intelligent people. Learn to live within your means, be generous where you can, avoid unnecessary debt and remember that money can be a useful servant but makes a dreadful master.

All these things—truth, love, relationships, wisdom and money—lead me towards what I most want to leave with you, which is the importance of seeking friendship with God. Human beings are capable of astonishing goodness, courage and tenderness, so love them, enjoy them, forgive them and allow yourself to be loved by them. At the same time, do not ask another human being to carry the weight that belongs to God. Even the best people will sometimes disappoint you, just as you will sometimes disappoint those who love you. If your deepest foundation rests entirely upon another person, you are asking a fragile human being to bear something no human being was designed to carry.

Psalm 15 contains a beautiful picture of the person who can have intimacy with God and enjoy friendship with Him. What strikes me is that the description has nothing to do with wealth, intelligence, social position or achievement. It is about character: someone who walks with integrity, practises what is right, speaks truth from the heart, refuses to injure others with his words, keeps his promises even when doing so becomes costly, and will not exploit another person for financial advantage. There is something wonderfully uncomplicated about that picture. The world may measure you by what you possess, what you accomplish or how important you appear, but God looks at what kind of person you are becoming.

The world you inherit will undoubtedly be very different from the one in which I grew up. Technology will change beyond anything I can presently imagine, customs will change, and ideas considered unquestionable today may one day appear strange or even foolish. Your own generation will have its certainties too, and some of them may eventually prove equally mistaken. That is why I hope you will never build your life merely upon what happens to be fashionable around you. Build it instead upon things that endure, and when you are uncertain, ask whether something is true, whether it is loving and honourable, whether you are treating another person as you would wish to be treated, and whether you can do it with a clear conscience before God.

I do not expect you to think exactly as I think, nor would I want you merely to inherit my conclusions without examining them for yourselves. You will have your own questions, make discoveries I never made and undoubtedly make mistakes of your own. Some wisdom can be passed from one generation to another, but some has to be acquired through living. What I hope is that, wherever life takes you, you remain lovers of truth without becoming harsh, cautious without becoming cynical, strong without becoming hard, and humble enough to change your mind when you discover that you were wrong. Be kind to people who can do nothing for you, never mistake another person's weakness for an opportunity to exploit them, and whenever you can make somebody's burden a little lighter, do so.

Life passes more quickly than you can presently imagine. Perhaps one day you too will sit down to write to the children and youth of your world and wonder what you can possibly tell them about a world you will not live long enough to see. By then I hope you will have discovered for yourselves that a good life is not finally measured by what you accumulated, how impressive you appeared or how many people knew your name. Its deeper measure is found in what you loved, what you stood for, how you treated those who crossed your path, whether you remained faithful to truth when falsehood would have been easier, and whether your friendship with God shaped the person you became.

If you do, perhaps when your own grandchildren look at you many years from now, the most valuable inheritance you give them will not be something you possess at all. It will be the kind of person they saw you become.

With all my love,

Written by Jim, with editorial assistance from ChatGPT.

The CV for Eternity

I have often felt that I was born in the wrong place. I do not mean the small industrial town where my life began. I mean that I have felt out of step with the spirit of the age.

When I look at the direction Britain and Europe are taking, I worry about my grandchildren and the young people growing up around them. What will they inherit? What will they accept as normal?

Dishonesty, selfishness and disregard for others trouble me wherever I find them—in politics, business, families and religion. I also recognise these failings in myself. I cannot examine the world honestly without examining my own heart.

Yet I long for a world where kindness is dependable, promises mean something and people can trust one another.

Psalm 15 gives that longing a shape. It asks who may dwell in God’s presence, then describes a person who lives uprightly, speaks truth from the heart, refuses to slander, keeps promises even at personal cost and does not exploit others.

These are the qualities that make peace possible. When I think about the paradise Jesus promised, I think about the people who will live there. Who will be found worthy of that life? Surely their hearts and conduct must align with the qualities described in Psalm 15. Carry dishonesty, greed and cruelty into a new world, and the old suffering would follow.

I have come to believe that life on this imperfect planet involves an examination of the heart. Our choices reveal what we love, what we value and whose guidance we follow.

Second Chronicles 16:9 says:

“For the eyes of the LORD roam to and fro over all the earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are fully devoted to Him.”

God’s watchfulness gives me hope. He searches for devoted hearts and strengthens those who turn towards him. The One who examines us also understands our frailty and sees sincere efforts that others overlook.

This examination unfolds through ordinary life. We admit a mistake when concealment would be easier. We protect someone’s reputation when gossip would win approval. We keep our word when breaking it would benefit us. We help a neighbour when doing so interrupts our comfort.

Time reveals our character and gives it room to grow.

If I claimed to be stronger than another man, an arm-wrestling match could settle the matter in minutes. If I claimed to be more honest, it would take far longer to judge. Integrity becomes visible through changing circumstances, pressures and opportunities.

God already knows our hearts. Through our choices, we come to understand ourselves and can allow him to shape us.

This does not explain every sorrow. Some suffering leaves wounds nobody else can see. God understands those burdens, and his judgment takes account of what ours cannot.

Still, these years matter. Here, on an imperfect earth, we can learn to practise the goodness that belongs in a better one.

I cannot control everything my grandchildren will encounter. I can help them recognise goodness by making it something they have experienced. I can listen patiently, speak truthfully, keep my promises and treat others with dignity.

I am still learning, still failing and still beginning again. I depend upon God’s mercy and the strength he gives.

When his eyes search the earth, I want him to find in me a heart willing to be taught. And when I pray for the paradise Jesus promised, I am also asking him to help me become the kind of neighbour who belongs there.

Written by Jim, with editorial assistance from ChatGPT.

Capturing the Mist

I was reading Ecclesiastes today. “Vanity of vanities,” writes the wise man in verse 1:2.

Quite often, my wife and I drive over to Loch Lomond for breakfast at a hotel overlooking the loch.

On those early mornings, the mist sometimes seems so close that you could reach out and gather it into your hands. Yet you cannot hold it. Like a rainbow, it remains beyond your grasp.

That gives me a little insight into the Hebrew word hevel: breath, mist, or vapour. Something fleeting; something elusive.

Depending on its context, hevel can suggest transience, futility, or the impossibility of holding on to something. 

The writer of Ecclesiastes looks honestly at human life. We work, achieve, gather possessions, and seek wisdom. Yet we cannot stop time, guarantee what happens next, or keep what we have forever. There is a deep frustration in this: we long for something lasting in a world that keeps changing.

For capturing that picture, the Evangelical Heritage Version gets my award. It renders Ecclesiastes 1:2:

“Nothing but vapor,” Ecclesiastes said. “Totally vapor. Everything is just vapor that vanishes.”

Reading those words, I find myself back beside Loch Lomond, watching the morning mist.

Ecclesiastes 1:1-3 EHV - The Heading - The words of - Bible Gateway

What Is Life?

Two thoughts have been dancing in and out of my mind, rather like those shifting lights in the northern sky. At first they seemed separate, but gradually they began to illuminate one another. The first came from something the chemist James Tour said while discussing one of the most elementary yet mysterious boundaries in nature. Consider a single cell that has just died. Its molecular machinery and structures do not simply vanish at the moment of death, yet something fundamental has changed. Tour asks the wonderfully simple question, ‘When a single cell just dies, what is it we just lost?’ (Tour, 2024). It is a question that has stayed with me: what was living is no longer alive.

Science has revealed much about the death of a cell and the processes of decay that follow. Yet these discoveries leave room for a broader question about the nature and meaning of life: what is life?

That question takes my mind back thousands of years to the language of Genesis. We are told that God forms Adam from the dust of the ground, the adamah, and then breathes into him the breath of life. The human being then becomes what the Hebrew text calls a nefesh chayyah, a living being (Genesis 2:7). There is something profoundly simple about the picture. The material from which Adam is formed belongs to the earth, but when God gives the breath of life, that formed matter becomes a living human being.

There is also something beautiful about the biblical language of breath. Genesis 2 uses the Hebrew word neshamah for the breath of life, while another important Hebrew word, ruach, can mean wind, breath or spirit. They are not the same word and should not simply be treated as interchangeable, but together they belong to a biblical vocabulary in which breath and life are intimately connected. Anyone who has stood beside someone taking their final breaths understands why this imagery has such enduring power. Breath accompanies us through life, and its departure is a powerful sign of death.

I do not think that what takes place with a cell in a laboratory is directly equivalent to the first man receiving the breath of life. To equate them would confuse two different kinds of explanation. Science can investigate the mechanisms by which living things function and the processes by which they die—the how. Genesis addresses a theological question about the ultimate source and meaning of life—the why. The two questions are different, but placing them beside one another can be illuminating.

There is something deeply arresting about the comparison. A scientist can observe the processes through which a cell dies and identify the signs that life has ended. Genesis invites us to consider the opposite: the entryway to life.

Neither perspective diminishes my wonder. Together, they deepen it.

Standing imaginatively between the laboratory and that ancient Hebrew text, I find myself returning to the same deceptively simple question: what is life? Science continues to give us increasingly remarkable descriptions of how living systems work, and we should treasure those discoveries. Genesis asks us to look beyond mechanism to source and meaning, and answers in the language of breath, earth and gift. Humanity is formed from the dust of the ground, God breathes the breath of life, and the creature becomes a living being.

References

Tour, J. (2024) ‘The shocking truth about life’s origins’, interview with E. Huffman, Maybe God Podcast, 26 December. Available at: Maybe God website (Accessed: 21 September 2026).

Berean Bible Translation Committee (2023) Berean Standard Bible. Available at: Berean Bible (Accessed: 21 September 2026).

Written by Jim, with editorial assistance from ChatGPT.

Swans

On a bright morning, I find such satisfaction in visiting the swans and watching them glide gracefully across the water. I take care to feed them well—never bread or processed food, but fresh green peas, kale, lettuce leaves, or specially prepared swan food from the pet shop. It is a simple act of kindness, yet it brings peace to the heart and reminds me that every living creature is precious in God’s sight. “The righteous care for the needs of their animals.” — Proverbs 12:10

The Wild Swans at Coole by W.B. Yeats

But now they drift on the still water

Mysterious, beautiful;

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes, when I awake some day

To find they have flown away?

Charlie Bucket, Golden Ticket and  Denouement 

Have you ever stopped and wondered why we are so fond of happy endings?

Dorothy gets home from Oz. Charlie Bucket gets the Golden Ticket. The Magnificent Seven ride into town and put things right. Even when a story takes us through darkness, loss and terrible injustice, something in us longs for the scales to be balanced before the curtain falls.

We want a denouement.

And when a story denies us one—when evil simply triumphs, goodness counts for nothing and suffering is revealed to have been meaningless—we can feel strangely robbed.

Why?

Some years ago, I came across these words from the English jurist William Blackstone:

“[God] has so inseparably interwoven the laws of eternal justice with the happiness of each individual, that the latter cannot be attained but by observing the former; and, if the former be punctually obeyed, it cannot but induce the latter.”

It demands a little of the old grey matter, but Blackstone was making a profound claim: happiness and justice are not accidental companions. They belong together because they are woven into the moral fabric of reality.

Martin Luther King Jr. expressed a related conviction in that famous line: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

There is something deeply human about believing this.

Watch what happens when somebody casually jumps a queue. It can be in Japan, Australia, the Philippines or Britain. Immediately there is that little internal protest: That’s not fair.

Notice what we are saying. Not merely, I don't like that. We mean something stronger.

It ought not to be so.

That tiny word ought opens an enormous door.

Human beings seem to possess a gravitational pull towards justice. We want courage to matter, cruelty to be answered, sacrifice to mean something, innocence to be vindicated and love, somehow, to have the final word.

That is why denouement matters.

A satisfying ending does more than finish a story. It resolves its moral tension. Something that was broken is restored; something hidden is revealed; something unjust is answered. The world of the story comes back into alignment.

And we recognise that alignment almost instinctively.

Of course, real life does not always give us happy endings. Good people suffer. The guilty sometimes prosper. Some wounds remain open when people die. Christianity does not ask us to pretend otherwise. In fact, it looks directly at that terrible incompleteness and makes an astonishing claim: the story isn't over yet.

That changes the question.

If mankind is nothing more than matter in motion—creatures pirouetting to our DNA in a dark and ultimately aimless universe—our persistent hunger for final justice is curious. Nature could explain why we dislike pain or why cooperation helps communities survive. But our longing goes further. We want justice even for the dead. We want wrongs corrected that no living person can correct. We want the final chapter to make moral sense of all the chapters that came before it.

We want denouement on an existential scale.

Maybe that is why happy endings have such power over us. They touch something older and deeper than entertainment. They whisper that chaos is not ultimate, that goodness is not foolish, that suffering does not possess the final word.

The Christian story makes precisely that claim.

The God who formed the moon and stars, who gave the earth its gravitational pull, also made creatures who experience another kind of gravity: a pull towards goodness, justice, reconciliation and home.

Dorothy wants Kansas. Charlie enters the chocolate factory. The stranger rides into town and confronts the wrong that everyone else has learned to tolerate.

Different stories. The same ancient ache.

We want things put right.

And it may be that the human psyche embraces denouement because, somewhere beneath all our sophistication, we suspect that reality itself has one.

Image kindly provided by https://unsplash.com/@sickle

There is a beautiful piece of cinematography in Nikita Mikhalkov’s movie Urga, where one is presented with a vast panoramic field of emerald grass. There’s movement in the distance. The image gets closer and closer and slowly coming into focus. It’s accompanied by the sound of rumbling hooves and snorting. Wafts of agitated dust float in a state of suspended animation which hastens the suspense. The camera eventually centres on the focal point, Gombo,  a vigorous Mongolian equestrian shepherd mounted on his stocky steed fill the screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j3jY_meJAM&t=3s

The scene acts as an apt metaphor for the personal essay. One begins with something out of focus. A word like ‘nostalgia.’ A sentence like ‘It happened like this.’ A quote like Soderberg’s ‘People want to be loved, failing that admired…our soul seeks connection at any price.’ An image like Avril Paten’s painting, Windows in the West or the German word Fernveh.

Then, my journey begins. I have no maps. I have no coordinates. Just the loose excursions of my mind. My reader joins me on this pilgrimage or saunter; a description that’s dependant on the subject. It’s often highway to seemingly nowhere, but the scenery is interesting, occasionally captivating.  It’s worth the effort.

It’s an image of what’s going on in my head, albeit a glass darkly. But the process of pen to paper sparks a chemistry that is leading to a place. The place appears and disappears in a literary eclipse. We appear lost, but in the large vat of editing, the destination emerges.

Like a camel on the road to Kathmandu, the personal essay can take the load I have to pack on. My memoirs, musings, my angst, the wanderings of my mind, my peculiarities and fears, my worldview, and philosophies. The introduction to the personal essay was like bursting out of prison and finding a voice for all I have to say.

Yes, I could have specialised in poetry, fiction or drama, but  nonfiction was the place I found my voice.

When Strangers Leave Footprints on the Heart

In the great theatre of life, there are people who walk onto the stage for only a little while and yet, somehow, never quite leave us. We may not remember every detail of the day on which we met them, or even their names, but we remember what they did. More than that, we remember how they made us feel. Years pass, circumstances change, faces fade from view, and still these people remain in some quiet chamber of the heart.

I think of a man from my sixties childhood who gave us a half-crown and told us hungry youngsters to go and buy ourselves an ice cream. To another person it might have seemed a small gesture, hardly worth remembering, but to a hungry child generosity has a different weight. That coin bought more than ice cream. For a brief moment it told us that somebody had noticed us, that somebody cared whether we had a little happiness that day. The ice cream disappeared long ago, but strangely enough, the kindness never did.

Then I remember two young schoolteachers from Södertälje in Sweden whom I met aboard the Princess of Scandinavia in the mid nineties when I was young as she made her way from Newcastle to Gothenburg. We were strangers brought together by nothing more mysterious than being aboard the same ship, travelling across the same stretch of sea enjoying a drink together. Yet sometimes human beings cross the distance between stranger and friend remarkably quickly. Something in conversation, some shared laughter or openness, creates a connection that refuses to be measured by the number of hours we have known one another. The journey ends, people go their separate ways, and nevertheless something of them travels on with us.

There was also a bitter Scottish winter when my car became trapped in a deep snowdrift. Somewhere along that motorway a man saw my predicament, continued on his way until he could turn around, and made a journey of some ten miles simply to come back and offer his help. I have often thought about that. He could have driven on. Most of the world would never have known that he had passed a stranded motorist in the snow, and no one would have condemned him for continuing his journey. But compassion made another demand upon him. He saw another human being in difficulty and decided that my problem had, for a little while, become his problem too.

And then, only this week, there was Steve, a man doing some work in my house. He went beyond what the job required, but what stays with me most is not simply the work he did. It was the human connection that grew while we talked. As the hours passed, we exchanged stories about our lives and discovered that both of us had known difficult childhoods. There was something almost unspoken in that recognition, as though two people who had travelled over some of the rougher ground of life could recognise the landscape in one another.

Perhaps suffering can do one of two things to us. It can harden the heart, or it can deepen it. When pain has not been allowed to make us bitter, it can become strangely fertile soil for compassion. Those who remember what it was to be frightened may become the ones who reassure others. Those who remember loneliness may notice the person standing alone. Those who once needed kindness may become unusually generous in giving it. We cannot always choose the wounds life gives us, but by the grace of God those wounds need not have the final word. Sometimes the very places where life once hurt us become the places from which tenderness grows.

Looking back, I wonder whether these apparently accidental meetings are quite as insignificant as they first appear. A man with a half-crown, two young teachers on a ship crossing the North Sea, a stranger turning back through a Scottish winter, and a workman named Steve sharing stories in my home: none arrived with trumpets or announcements. They simply entered my life, left something good behind, and moved on.

That is one of the quiet wonders of being human. We rarely know which of our actions another person will remember. A kindness that costs us five minutes may be remembered for fifty years. A few words spoken casually may give someone courage at precisely the moment they need it. We may forget the kindness we gave while the person who received it carries it for the rest of their life. There is something wonderfully humbling about that.

And for those of us who believe that God is gathering human history towards a purpose greater than the brief span of our earthly lives, there is another beautiful possibility. Perhaps some of life's unfinished conversations are not finished at all. The people whose goodness touched us and then disappeared beyond the horizon of our lives are not lost forever to us.

The apostle Peter speaks of this magnificent hope: “But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.” — 2 Peter 3:13.

I love to imagine what that promise might mean when translated from theology into human experience. A world in which righteousness dwells would surely be a world in which goodness is no longer interrupted by sorrow, separation or death. No doubt there, in God's great tomorrow, paths that crossed briefly here will cross again. We will recognise persons we thought we had seen for the last time and discover that no act of love was ever truly lost.

Until then, their stories remind me of something I do not want to forget: we are all passing through one another's lives. We cannot know how long we will remain there, but while we are there, we can leave kindness behind.

And sometimes, that is enough to be remembered for a lifetime.