Personal Blogs

The Greatest Question We Need to Ask 

"So if you know the right way to live and ignore it, it is sin..."

James 4:17 (The Voice).

Sin, we don’t like that word. We don’t hear it often these days. The word “sin” peaked in the 1800s. It began a steady decline in the early-to-mid 1900s. Its usage today is a fraction of what it once was. This doesn’t just reflect religious belief—it reflects how people choose to frame moral ideas in the  public sphere.

Let’s Imagine, for a moment, whether you are a Christian or  an  agnostic or just anyone going about your dai!y life,  that the Last Day has come upon us. History has closed its concluding chapter. The noise of the world has gone silent. There are no arguments left to win, no social masks left to wear, no way left to manage, or air brush the story of who we were. You cannot blame others; you have a conscience. Only truth remains. And now we stand before the great judgment.

In that moment, the only question that matters are not what we believed about ourselves, but what is true.

A quiet illusion follows every human being through life. Psychologists call it the Lake Wobegon Effect, the belief that we are above average, more loving than most, more honest than most, more moral than most.We whisper this dellusion to ourselves that whatever judgment may come, we will surely be on the right side of it. Others, aware that a final judgment awaits, drift into a self-sabotaging procrastination and say, “One day I will get myself right.” Between quiet apathy and quiet delay, the heart learns how to avoid urgency like those living in Pompei before they became a living museum.

But the first question that echoes through eternity is not about morality, reputation, or intention. It is about Christ.

Scripture says, “Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already.” In that moment, belief is no longer an idea or a cultural identity or a Sunday habit. It is revealed for what it always was, trust of the heart or rejection of it. Another voice speaks with unmistakable clarity: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Not one of many roads. Not the best of several options. The way.

Then the record of our lives is opened, not what we intended to be, not what we said we valued, but what we did. Scripture declares that the dead are judged according to what was recorded in the symbolic books, that God repays each person according to what they have done, that we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive what is due for the things done in the body, whether good or bad. Every choice matters here. Every word spoken in haste. Every moment we chose convenience over conscience. Every time we loved at cost, and every time we refused to. There is no comparison now, no refuge in “at least I wasn’t as bad as them.” That shelter quietly collapses.

Then the judgment moves deeper, past what we did and into why we did it. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil. Every empty word spoken is summoned into the light. Here, motives are stripped of their disguises. Generosity revealed as pride. Silence revealed as fear. Kindness revealed as self-protection. Even our best deeds stand trembling under the weight of truth. The Lake Wobegon illusion finally shatters like thin ice beneath our feet. We were not as pure as we thought.

Now the judgment turns our eyes outward toward the lives around us. The hungry. The sick. The imprisoned. The abandoned. The orphan. The widow. The foreigner. And Jesus Himself speaks whatever you did for one of the least of these chosen ones of of Mine, you did for Me. The warning follows with equal force: judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Here, neglect carries weight. Indifference carries weight. The countless chances to love when it cost us something rise like witnesses in the room. We begin to see how often we chose comfort over compassion and called it wisdom.

Finally, we stand before the standard itself, God’s moral law. Even conscience becomes a witness for or against us. No one stands clean. Not the religious. Not the sceptic. Not the kind neighbour. Not the proud moralist. All fall short. We need grace.

And then grace enters the courtroom like a welcome visitor. Scripture says it is by grace we have been saved, through faith, and this is not from ourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. No one is saved by performance. No one is rescued by reputation. No one is justified by comparison. Only by grace. And that grace does not excuse an unchanged life, it creates a transformed one.

At last, the final truth settles over every soul. No one can stand perfect before God on their own. But through Christ, forgiveness is offered freely. The judgment is not about punishment alone. It is about truth, healing, justice, and restoration. At the centre of it all stands a Savior bearing scars, not only as Judge, but as Redeemer.

That imagined courtroom is not meant to paralyze us with fear. It is meant to awaken us. Because today, the books are not closed. Today, mercy is still offered. Today, faith is still possible. Today, a life can still turn around.

And so, the greatest question we need to ask ourselves is not, “Am I better than most?”
But this: “If the last day were today, would I be ready to stand in truth?”

Some verses to ponder on

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” — John 14:6

“The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.” — Revelation 20:12

“God will repay each person according to what they have done.” — Romans 2:6

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” — 2 Corinthians 5:10

“People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” — 1 Samuel 16:7

“For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.” — Ecclesiastes 12:14

“Everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken.” — Matthew 12:36

All verses from the Berean Standard Bible

"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”

Proverbs 14:12

Life Out of Balance

There’s a word on which I was pondering. You may have never heard it. It’s Koyaanisqatsi, Hopi word meaning “life out of balance.” A way of living so misaligned that it demands a reassessment of life.

That word names the quiet ache that trails you into every room. The hollow echo after the laughter fades. The strange loneliness that settles in even when you’re surrounded by noise and bodies and motion. It’s the feeling that you’ve wandered off the road yet keep insisting you know exactly where you’re going.

You tell yourself this is freedom. You call it youth. You dress it up as exploration. But be honest—why does it still feel empty? Why the constant need to prove you’re alive? Why does approval feel heavier than rejection?

There is an older story that mirrors your own. A son once asked his father for his inheritance early. In doing so, he didn’t just want the money—he wanted the life without the Father. He left home and found a distant country filled with bright lights and easy pleasure. And for a while, it worked. Until it didn’t.

However, like the modern world, many turn to drugs, alcohol and the pursuit of pleasures that works for a while, until they don't. 

Returning to our story,

A famine came. It always does. And the son found himself feeding pigs, aching with hunger, realizing that what once felt like freedom had slowly turned into chains.

That, too, is koyaanisqatsi.

But the moment that changes everything is quiet and small: “He came to his senses.” Not a collapse, not a miracle, just clarity. A realization that the road he chose did not lead where he hoped. And that home was still home.

You are not beyond return. Not even close. That restlessness inside you is not proof that you’re broken, it’s proof that you’re still alive. It is the Spirit stirring beneath all your noise, calling you back to what is real. You are not suffering because you love freedom; you are suffering because you were made for more than endless escape.

I know the ache you carry. You want to be seen without being shamed. You want arms that open instead of eyes that accuse. You want to hear that it’s not too late.

And it isn’t.

The Father is already watching the horizon. Long before you reach the gate. Long before you clean yourself up. He recognizes you even at a distance—and He runs.

Come home.

Stop spending your energy assigning blame. That only keeps you stuck in the mud, rehearsing the past instead of choosing the future. Your parents failed you in ways. So did your friends. So did life. But only you can turn your feet toward the road that leads back.

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” 

You don’t have to wait for everything to collapse before you change. You can turn now—before the marriages crack, before the bitterness hardens, before regret sets like concrete. Before your story becomes something you no longer recognize.

There is a robe with your name on it. A ring that says you belong. A table already set with joy and music.

Come home while your heart is still soft. While your strength is still in you. Before you wake up one day as a stranger to your own younger hopes.

You were never meant to drag your shame through endless nights, calling it independence. You were never meant to do life without a Father.

Turn around.

—Your older self,
who finally learned what it means to be found.

Read the full account at,

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%2015:11-32&version=ESV

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How Far Have You Wandered?: On the Death of a Child

The 18th-century Japanese poet Fukuda Chiyo-ni once wrote a simple, aching haiku:

My dragonfly catcher,
How far have you wandered—
Have you gone?

There are moments in life when a person finds themselves in a place so dark that words can hardly reach it. Losing someone we love—especially a child—creates a depth of pain most of us can scarcely imagine. It is a shadowed valley that feels impossible to comprehend from the outside, and unbearable to inhabit from within.

Chiyo-ni eventually became a nun, perhaps searching for meaning, perhaps seeking a way to live alongside the grief that reshaped her life. Death is something we struggle to understand because it feels so wrong, so unnatural to the heart. And so we spend our remaining days wondering, reaching, hoping, praying—trying to make sense of what has been taken, and trying to hold on to whatever light we can find.

“For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.”

1 Corinthians 15:21 (BSB)

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“I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.”

Henry David Thoreau

The Throb of Solastalgia at Sycamore Gap

There’s a place on The Island of Bute where I often find a quiet contemplative place of solace. It is the ancient St Blane’s Chapel in the Kingarth area of the island. So, when the Sycamore Gap tree was felled, something far deeper than timber fell with it. The news spread with the force of a collective gasp, as if the nation, and many beyond it, felt a sudden hollowness at the centre of a landscape they had trusted to remain unchanged. The grief that followed was not simply about losing a tree. It was a moment of solastalgia—that particular sorrow that arises when a beloved environment is altered against our will, leaving us homesick while still standing at home.

For decades, the Sycamore Gap tree had been a solitary sentinel along Hadrian’s Wall, a guardian of windswept hills and open skies. Its silhouette was so familiar that even those who had never walked the path felt they somehow knew it. It stood in postcards, photography books, engagement albums, and in the memories of hikers who traced their steps across Northumberland’s rugged beauty. The tree belonged to everyone and to no one—a quiet companion in the world’s noisy turning.

Countless stories were rooted in its presence. Young couples made their promises beneath its branches, the tree’s canopy framing the beginning of their shared lives. To them, it was not only a picturesque place but a witness—steady, ancient, dignified—against which they marked their own fleeting joys. For others, the walk to the Gap was a pilgrimage of the heart. People struggling with anxiety, loss, or hardship found a strange therapy in the way the land opened around the tree, offering both solitude and reassurance. Its very shape felt like a pause—an invitation to breathe in the same way I feel about my space on Bute.

Photographers adored it, not just for its beauty but for its humility. No matter the hour or the angle, the tree never demanded attention; it quietly offered it. Morning light turned it into a dark brushstroke on a silver horizon. Twilight wrapped it in softness. In snowfall, it became a sculpture. For walkers, reaching the Gap felt like meeting an old friend. They would rest there, leaning against stone or sitting in the grass, letting the world collect into calm around them.

So, when the tree was cut down, the grief that erupted was startling in scale yet deeply human. People mourned as though a part of their own histories had been severed. The empty Gap looked raw, almost wounded. The landscape felt wrong, as if a chapter had been torn from a book mid-sentence. This was solastalgia made visible—a sense of displacement created not by distance but by damage. A beloved place had changed, and in that change, we felt something of ourselves altered too.

What astonished many was how quickly the world rallied around this absence. Flowers, notes, drawings, and carvings appeared. Stories poured out—first kisses shared beneath its branches, moments of clarity found during long solitary walks, first photographs that inspired lifelong passions. The tree’s fall revealed how much life had grown around it.

Solastalgia often carries despair, but at Sycamore Gap it also revealed connection. In grieving the tree, people discovered each other. The collective sorrow became a tribute: a reminder that landscapes shape us, that we rely on certain places to stay steady, and that the destruction of beauty is never a small thing.

What remains now is not only loss but a strange tenderness. Even in its absence, the Sycamore Gap tree continues its quiet work—calling us to remember what endures, what deserves protection, and what binds us to the earth and to one another. Its trunk may no longer rise against the sky, but the stories rooted in its shade still stand, refusing to fall.

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The Existential Cadence of Runrig Songs

While most of Troon stayed tucked inside their warm homes as the temperature slipped toward two degrees last night, the Town Hall was slowly filling. Coats were shrugged off, wool scarves hung on the backs of chairs. On stage, the soundcheck trembled through the floorboards as Beat the Drum tuned up for The Runrig Experience.

I’ve been circling the same question since I was twenty, listening to Runrig’s music and lyrics: what draws people from so far to hear this music? Why do Germans, Danes, Americans, Highlanders, Lowlanders, urban Scots and homesick expats all arrange winter drives, ferries, flights—just to gather under these songs?

Tonight, in Troon, with my breath still thawing in the hall’s warm air, the question returned with its familiar ache.

Perhaps it begins with awe; the sweep of geese over the glens, the unspoiled landscapes, the tactile pull of refrains like “S na horo eile, horo bho” in Skye. It may be the call to the wild, to a time when life felt simpler, or at least more spacious. For me as a Christian, there is something more: the glimpse of another believer writing of hope, of dawn breaking again, of faith’s quiet mystery in Every River. Some hear only the theme of homecoming, and that is there, unmistakably. But I also sense a deeper return—something spiritual, a home approached with the heart rather than the body.

In Life Is Hard, the lyrics brush against the idea of deliverance, of being washed clean. Yet as with any good poem, once a song enters open territory it becomes shared property. Each listener carries away their own meaning, even when those meanings diverge, or falter, or contradict the writer’s intent. That is part of the intimacy of it.

In an age when so much popular music leans on familiar tropes—desire, breakups, the small mechanics of daily life—Runrig’s songs feel like crafted stories in miniature. They hold the existential pull of being caught between worlds, like in The Cutter, where a cultural border becomes an emotional one. Even the Gaelic itself, opaque to many of us, doesn’t exclude; it deepens the experience. We don’t always understand the words, but we feel the cadence, the gravity.

So why are we drawn to these songs of longing? Perhaps because they reach into questions of identity, because they name our hunger for a better life, or for a place that seems half-remembered even when we have never stood there. The Germans call it Fernweh: a longing for a place we have not yet known.

And so, I sit there, returning to the same existential questions that haunted me at twenty: Where is home now that life has moved on? Who am I when the old certainties have shifted? Is there still room for my language, my memories, my faith, my people? Am I the only one who feels both lost and hopeful, suspended somewhere in-between? Some answers come; others recede. But that’s the way it is meant to be.

Compassion For the Overlooked

There’s a verse in the Psalms that carries considerable weight for me. It’s in Psalm 68.

It speaks of God being,

“A father of the fatherless,

and a defender of the widows,

is God in His holy habitation.

God settles the lonely in families.”

Many people know what it feels like to live on the edges of society. I experienced this when I walked away from a high control religion. However, reasons for exclusion vary—disability, being a stranger in a new place, having a mind that works differently, simply being misunderstood or failure to analyse our flaws. These experiences can create isolation, confusion, and a sense of being unseen. Scripture acknowledges this reality and goes even further, promising that God gathers the alien and the lonely into a true family, giving fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers to those who once stood alone.

One of the clearest biblical portraits of compassion toward the marginalized appears in the story of Mephibosheth. As a small child, he suffered a devastating injury when his caregiver fled in panic after hearing of Saul and Jonathan’s death. The fall left him permanently disabled and he grew up far from the centre of power, carrying both physical limitations and the fear that the new king might view him as a threat (2 Samuel 4:4).

Years later, in 2 Samuel 9, King David asks whether anyone remains from Saul’s household to whom he might show compassionate loyalty. Ziba, Saul’s former servant, answers with a brief and almost dismissive phrase: Jonathan’s son is still alive— “but he is lame.” No name, no honour, just a fact that marked Mephibosheth as someone of little importance.

When Mephibosheth is brought before David, he bows low and calls himself a “dead dog,” revealing how deeply his sense of worth had been eroded. But David’s response overturns everything he fears. The king speaks gently, assures him of safety, restores his family’s land, and seats him permanently at the royal table—treated as one of David’s own sons. In a moment, the forgotten outsider becomes a cherished guest.

David’s mercy offers more than a story of personal kindness. It foreshadows the heart of Jesus Himself. Just as Mephibosheth was carried into David’s presence unable to make himself worthy, we are carried by grace into the presence of Christ. David gives a place at his table; Jesus goes further and gives us a place in His family. David restores land; Jesus restores identity, dignity, and hope. David’s compassion becomes a faint echo of the greater King who welcomes all who come to Him with their wounds, fears, and losses.

Jesus’ invitation still stands: “Come to me.” He does not wait for strength or perfection—He receives those who feel broken, overlooked, or unworthy. Have you ever placed your own pain in His hands? He is ready for it.

Because we belong to this compassionate King, we are called to reflect His heart. Marginalization can take many shapes—ignoring someone’s presence, mocking what makes them different, or treating them as a problem rather than a person. But followers of Jesus are invited to move in the opposite direction: to notice, to honour, to restore, and to create spaces of belonging. The table of God is wide enough for all, and He invites us to carry that welcome into the world.

May we learn to see others the way David saw Mephibosheth—and even more, the way Jesus sees us all.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and to the ages Hebrews 13: 8 (BSB).

Always Asking

I have often wondered why some people seem to slip so naturally into prayer, as if it were the most effortless thing in the world. Eric Liddell, it is said, prayed an hour a day without fail. My wife is much the same, steady, and devoted, quietly faithful. She moves toward prayer as naturally as breath. I admire it, and yet when I try to follow the same path, I find myself stumbling. My thoughts scatter, and I come away wondering why something so simple can feel so hard to sustain.

What I return to repeatedly is the act of asking. Perhaps because I need it so often. Perhaps because asking is woven into the human condition, into my condition. I think of the psalmists, especially David, bold in request, unashamed in petition, sometimes desperate, sometimes confident, always honest before God. There is comfort in knowing that even a king cried out for help. There is a kind of fellowship in those ancient words.

Yet not all the psalms are pleas. Some are nothing but praise, pure and overflowing with wonder. They leave no room for petitions because the psalmist has been caught up in something larger than need. C. S. Lewis once wrote that “praise is inner health made audible.” That has stayed with me, because it suggests that praise is not forced speech but a rising up from within, something the soul naturally does when it sees clearly.

Last night, on the west coast of Scotland, I saw a sunset that felt like a calling. The sky burned softly, gold fading into rose, then into the deep blue of coming night. To the left hung a crisp crescent moon, sharp and delicate against the dimming horizon. In that moment, it felt like an invitation.

People who witness a solar eclipses or the Northern Lights often describe the same thing, a feeling they cannot explain. A hush. A tremor of awe. A sense that something immense has brushed close. This is God whispering what creation has always whispered: Come and praise me.

“Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised,” says the psalmist in Psalm 145:3. I have read those words many times, but sometimes it takes a moment of beauty to understand them. Perhaps praise begins not with discipline but with noticing, with letting the world open our eyes. Praise is not something I must manufacture but something I can allow.

I still struggle. Prayer does not come easily to me. But I am learning to watch more closely, to listen for the invitations stitched into the quiet and the colour of the world. Always asking, yes, and occasionally touched by praise that rises like light on the horizon, the single flame that steadies the rest of the day.

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Writing Childhood: Galloway Street; Seeing Through a Child’s Eyes

I read John Boyle’s Galloway Street some fifteen years ago and back then, I realised it stands as a rare kind of memoir; one that doesn’t simply recall childhood but manages to enter it again. Rather than filtering memory through the polished distance of adulthood, Boyle writes as though he has stepped back into the cramped tenement rooms, the rough play, the Catholic rituals, the smells of the street, and the half-understood adult dramas with a child’s unguarded immediacy. The power of the book lies in that return: the vantage of a boy who sees the world not yet as a system, but as a collection of vivid, puzzling, often hilarious fragments.

Writing from a child’s viewpoint is deceptively difficult. An adult mind is trained to interpret, to contextualize, to moralize. A child’s mind simply encounters. Boyle’s achievement is his ability to resist the urge to explain his younger self, allowing the reader to feel the uncertainty, wonder, and sometimes the fear of a boy standing exactly where he once stood. Moments aren’t framed as lessons; they are lived. Humour isn’t crafted; it bubbles up naturally from innocence and misunderstanding. Pain isn’t magnified; it simply exists at the edge of the frame, the way a child experiences hardship without yet possessing the vocabulary for it.

This perspective gives the memoir its tenderness. The adult writer knows what the child did not—about poverty, about sectarian tension, about the fragility of the adults in his life—but he never forces that hindsight onto the narrative. Instead, he lets the past breathe, allowing the reader to witness the world forming itself around the boy, brick by brick, story by story. In doing so, Boyle not only recreates a childhood; he honours it.

The emotional truth of this approach becomes especially striking when the book resonates with those who lived fragments of that same childhood. When I met an old school friend after fifty years, I gave him a copy and his immediate response—“That’s you and me when we were boys”—acted as a quiet confirmation of Boyle’s authenticity and the fact that it reflected our childhood in nearby Govan, just a few miles from Boyle’s Ferguslie Park, Paisley,  where the book was set.  It wasn’t that the memoir was a perfect factual mirror of your experiences; rather, it captured something deeper: the texture of boys growing up in a world that was often hard but always alive, always shared. You recognized yourselves not in the specific details, but in the spirit—the mischief, the limitations, the loyalties, the unspoken understanding that childhood friendships are forged from closeness rather than words.

My friend’s remark also reveals something essential about memoir itself. A good memoir doesn’t just present a life; it awakens the lives of others. Boyle’s child-viewpoint writing opens a door that my friend and I could both walk through, back into the noise of the street, the sting of the weather, the small victories, and the bewildering adult world just beyond your reach. In this way, Galloway Street becomes more than one man’s story; it becomes a shared landscape, a place where the memories of many readers find familiar footing.

Seen from the perspective of craft, Boyle’s method demonstrates how writing through a child’s eyes can preserve not only events, but the emotional truth underneath them. Seen from the personal angle you experienced, that same method has the power to bridge years, revive companionship, and remind us gently of who we once were.

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“He Has Left This World”

Last night I heard someone use a simple expression in everyday conversation: “He has left this world.” At first it sounds casual, a softened way to share news of a loss. Yet the more one listens, the more depth the phrase carries. It quietly invites reflection on questions that have followed humanity since the beginning. Within those few words is a network of philosophical, emotional, and spiritual meanings that help us face something that is often hard to speak aloud.

At its core, the phrase reshapes death as a departure rather than an end. Instead of describing life as something that stops suddenly and completely, it presents death as movement, a going from one place to another. Even those who do not hold firm beliefs about what lies beyond can sense in this language the idea of continuation. One cannot “leave” unless there is somewhere to go, even if that destination is unknown. The phrase leaves room for possibility without insisting on any conclusion. It gives grief space to breathe.

The expression also recognizes the world as a place where a person truly lived. To say someone “left this world” suggests that during their time here they took part in the shared human story. They loved, worked, hoped, struggled, and shaped the lives of others. Their presence mattered. This is why ancient people left handprints on cave walls and why others performed acts meant to say, “I was here, and this is the proof.”

The phrase also reflects the limits of our understanding. None of us knows with certainty what happens beyond death, so our language leans toward images and metaphors. To say someone has “left this world” is not to describe an event we can measure.

There is also a relational side to this way of speaking. The phrase draws a boundary between the living and the dead, yet it does so gently. The person is not gone into nothingness. They are simply elsewhere. This soft separation can bring comfort. We remain here, and they have gone ahead. The image is quiet but steadying. It holds grief without sinking into despair and encourages remembrance without holding too tightly.

Finally, the expression connects us to an old human instinct to see life as a journey. Across cultures and eras, people have described life as a path with beginnings, wandering, choices, and finally an end. Within this understanding, death becomes a destination, a moment when the traveller steps beyond the threshold into whatever comes next. The ordinary phrase we hear in conversation continues this ancient way of thinking. It suggests that life has meaning and direction and that death, though painful, belongs to the same story.

In the end, “he has left this world” shows the quiet strength of simple language. It gives us a way to speak about death that is neither harsh nor evasive. It allows space for tenderness, faith, uncertainty, and wonder. It invites us to think about what it means not only to die, but also to live, to be present in this world for a time before passing beyond it.

As a Christian, I believe there is life after death. In John 5:28–29 we read:

 “If this sounds amazing to you, what is even more amazing is that when the time comes, those buried long ago will hear His voice through all the rocks, sod, and soil and step out of decay into resurrection. When this hour arrives, those who did good will be resurrected to life, and those who did evil will be resurrected to judgment.” John 5:28–29 (The Voice):
I believe this not only because Scripture says it, but because of the evidence I have seen in my own relationship with the Lord and in the ways He has worked in my life. But please do not take my word for this read the following,

His purpose in all this was that people of every culture and religion would search for this ultimate God, grope for Him in the darkness, as it were, hoping to find Him. Yet, in truth, God is not far from any of us. Acts 17:27 (The Voice).

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

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"He whispers through what we often overlook"

Jack Frost Making Mischief Again 

I woke this morning to the sound of neighbours scraping frost from their car windscreens. With –3° showing on my temperature gauge, my thoughts drifted back to childhood mornings in Govan, when my mother would gently rouse me and announce that “Jack Frost was out.” Through my childhood lens, these expressions felt strange even odd. But it coloured everyday life in a Northern town.

Only years later, while studying Children’s Literature, did I discover just how many “Jacks” inhabit our stories: Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack-o’-Lantern, Jack-in-the-box. In folklore, the name often stood for the ordinary man—an archetype, a familiar figure who could slip easily into any tale.

Jack Frost, though, carried a character all his own: a personification of winter, playful at times, mischievous at others. Parents in places like Glasgow often used him to make sense of the frozen patterns on windows or to bring a little wonder into dark winter mornings. Through these stories, the cold world outside felt somehow alive, touched by imagination.

Historically, the name “Jack Frost” appears in English poetry in the 19th century, including a well-known poem attributed to James Whitcomb Riley in the 1880s, though its authorship remains debated.

For much of my life I imagined frost as a mostly northern or mountainous phenomenon, but when I began reading the Bible, I found frost woven quietly into Scripture. When God speaks to Job, He asks:

“From whose womb comes the ice?
Who gives birth to the frost of heaven?”
—Job 38:29–30

Even the coldest, smallest details of creation are shown to be shaped by His hand.

And in Exodus 16:14, when God provides manna in the wilderness, it appears “as a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground.” Something delicate, fleeting, yet faithfully renewed each morning.

It’s striking how often frost—so fragile it vanishes at a touch—carries meaning in both memory and Scripture. And perhaps that is its quiet gift: a reminder that God is present in the smallest corners of creation. Even in something as thin and temporary as a frost-flake, He speaks. He whispers through what we often overlook, inviting us to notice the ordinary with fresh eyes—and to find wonder waiting there.

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On Writing: What Makes a Good Prologue? 

t’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m meant to be resting this cold and fired up throat, but my mind keeps circling the same question: what makes a good prologue? I want one for my book because this project isn’t just a collection of essays. It’s an attempt to gather the elements that make a person—biography, spirituality, wonder, culture, travel, and the quiet weight of moral responsibility. All the things that shape a human life before God.

A prologue feels like the small doorway one slips through before entering a larger house. It’s not there to explain. It’s there to set a feeling in the reader’s chest, the kind that leans them forward before the official beginning even arrives. When it’s done well, it colours everything that follows, like adding a particular light source to a room.

It isn’t meant to be a stray “chapter zero.” A real prologue stands slightly apart, offering what the first chapter cannot. Sometimes it anchors the reader in a memory that can’t be placed anywhere else. Sometimes it casts a mood that the main text will only deepen. Sometimes it simply offers a truth that needs to be felt before it can be understood.

Think of Rebecca. The opening isn’t about plot at all. It’s a memory, carried like a scent. You’re inside the narrator’s dream before you ever meet her properly. Or Tolkien, whose prologue feels like picking up a weathered manuscript from a long-vanished world. Once you begin chapter one, you’re already steeped in the history he wants you to breathe.

What these writers do is simple: the prologue gives something the story can’t easily give later. It opens a door from a different angle.

So when I began shaping mine, I tried to ask the same question. What can be said here that can only be said here? A prologue doesn’t need to be large. A single image can carry a whole book. A single moment can hold a feeling the reader remembers hundreds of pages later. Clarity matters, but mystery matters too. The goal isn’t to teach; it’s to invite.

Used well, a prologue plants a seed whose meaning might stay hidden until the right moment. Then suddenly the reader realizes it’s been growing quietly since the first page. It becomes part of the pleasure of the whole.

Toni Morrison knew this. The opening of Beloved isn’t backstory. It’s atmosphere, grief, and truth distilled into a few sentences. The first chapter could never do what that opening does. It needs the key first, and the prologue is the key.

With all that in mind, I found myself returning to one memory from childhood, something I’ve carried for years. It stayed with me because it held wonder, simplicity, and that ache of human connection that makes life feel fuller than we can put into words. So I made it my prologue, just as it is.

“It must have been late summer, 1962, Telstar by the Tornados played regularly on the radio. I had spent the whole summer to autumn season on the Isle of Bute on Scotland’s west coast. We had a simple wooden hut with no water or electricity.
Each day I walked to the communal well with an older person with containers to collect water. Cows watched with wary eyes; the calves edging forward, curious, and timid.
At dusk, we lit paraffin lamps. My father read to us — Heidi, Tales from 1001 Nights, Chinese Folk Tales — his voice a thread that carried us into other worlds. We ate freshly baked pancakes with homemade jam and washed down with sweet stout in small glasses.
The lamp hissed softly, its light flickering sleep into our eyes. When it finally dimmed, so did we.
Lying in bed, I watched stars pour through the window; all of them. And I wondered if the Chinese farmer boys or the Bedouin shepherd boys or the milkmaids in the Swiss mountains were seeing and feeling the way I felt as the universe stepped gently into the room?”

That memory holds everything I hope the book will explore wonder, the dignity of simple things, the connectedness of human experience, and the sense that the world—wide as it is—is also somehow intimate.

Image by Copilot.

Inside the Mind of the Toxic Soul

There is a certain kind of person who walks into a room and subtly dims the light. They may not shout, they may not threaten, but something in their presence unsettles the air; an undercurrent of bitterness that clings like smoke. These individuals often carry a misery so heavy that they try, deliberately or instinctively, to hand pieces of it to others. Their spirit corrodes rather than comforts. Their words drain rather than nourish. And behind their sharpness almost always lies a private suffering they refuse to face. After all, no one can be happy if they manufacture evil from their heart.

To understand such people requires acknowledging a truth we often forget: cruelty is seldom born from strength. It is far more often the offspring of insecurity. As the novelist Leo Tolstoy once observed, “Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women,” a reminder that the company we keep, and the company we choose to be, shapes the world around us. Toxic individuals cannot bear uplifting environments because they are threatened by what they cannot emulate. Their inner misery makes kindness feel foreign, joy feel suspicious, and peace feel undeserved. 

Children’s stories capture this dynamic with remarkable clarity. The villains of childhood are rarely complex—they reflect emotional truths in simple, symbolic form. Take the character of the ogre or troll who lurks under a bridge, snarling at any traveller who dares to pass. Such figures often live alone, driven into shadows by their own fear, resentment, or loneliness. Their aggression is simply the language their pain has learned to speak.

Or consider the character of Captain Hook from Peter Pan. Beneath his flamboyant cruelty lies a lingering terror of the ticking crocodile—time itself—always reminding him that life is slipping through his fingers. Insecure, aging, and anxious, he lashes out at youth and innocence because they remind him of everything he feels he has lost. In this sense, he mirrors many real adults who sabotage happiness in others because they believe joy has abandoned them.

Even the wolf in The Three Little Pigs can be read as a symbolic version of toxicity: he huffs and puffs, not merely to destroy, but because he cannot bear the sturdy peace of the brick house he cannot enter. He destroys what he envies. And so do many people.

In daily life, toxic behaviour often appears in smaller, more subtle forms. The co-workers who spreads whispers to undermine someone else’s success. The friend who never celebrates another’s good news. The family member whose criticism is constant, no matter how much good stands before them. Their negativity is not about the person they target—it is about the emptiness they feel within. When someone tries to poison your joy, it is often a sign they have lost the ability to taste joy themselves.

Scripture speaks honestly about such people—not with condemnation, but with clarity and compassion. Proverbs 26:24-26 warns that malice can hide behind flattering lips, reminding us to be discerning. The Bible acknowledges both realities: that some people damage the souls of those around them, and that Christians are called to respond with a blend of wisdom and grace.

Jesus Himself taught that bitterness comes from within: “For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Luke 6:45). A heart full of jealousy will speak envy. A heart full of fear will speak control. A heart full of pain will speak poison.

But Scripture also offers a gentler lens. The Apostle Paul writes, “Bear with one another and forgive one another” (Colossians 3:13). Forgiveness does not mean subjecting oneself to cruelty; it means recognizing that toxic behaviour often emerges from spiritual hunger—a hunger so deep that people attempt to fill it with control, manipulation, or emotional harm.

C.S. Lewis captured this paradox of brokenness and cruelty when he wrote, “Of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst,” suggesting that those who feel powerless or unloved will sometimes weaponize even virtues. A toxic person often believes their actions are justified. They imagine themselves victims, warriors, or truth-tellers, when in reality they are spreading the very pain they refuse to confront.

Healthy boundaries are therefore essential. They are not walls of pride but walls of protection. They prevent us from being drawn into battles that are not ours, arguments we did not start, and emotions that were never meant to be ours to carry. Setting boundaries is not an act of rejection—it is an act of stewardship over one’s own heart. Proverbs 4:23 reminds us, “Guard your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.”

When we resist the pull of toxic behaviour, we quietly declare that another person’s storm does not have the right to drown our peace. We choose, instead, to cultivate compassion without allowing ourselves to be consumed. We choose to see the woundedness beneath the cruelty without letting it define us. And in doing so, we become something much more powerful: people of calm, people of truth, people of hope.

Ultimately, the antidote to those who create misery is not retaliation—it is resilience. It is the steady, unwavering choice to rise above the shadows others cast. It is the decision to let God’s love shape our reactions rather than someone else’s despair. And it is the commitment to be, in a world full of bitterness, a gentle and radiant presence that refuses to dim.

Image by Copilot

The Warmth of Unknown Faces

We may have met. Perhaps on the West Highland Way, or was it that day in Dubrovnik, maybe Warsaw or Berlin or the Govan we grew up in. Or perhaps we may never have met. What’s the chances? I was pondering this as I wandered through Glasgow yesterday. All these people—some bright with a ready smile, some carrying their burdens like invisible luggage. The woman silently debating which Christmas jumper to buy for her husband or was it her dad. The man in the wheelchair asking gently for a few coins. The fellow in Waterstones buying six books, moving with the certainty of someone who knows exactly what he seeks. I caught myself wondering about him: gifts, or indulgence? A well-read soul, either way. And there it was again—that restless longing the Portuguese call saudade de conhecer o mundo, that aching desire 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 they slipped past. It’s astonishing, really, 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? Were they thinking of someone they love? Were they wrestling with a decision or relishing a secret joy? There’s a gentle magic in the not-knowing, a kind of soft wonder that asks nothing more than attention.

I suppose that’s the heart of it: the warmth I feel doesn’t come from conversation but from possibility. The possibility that any one of these unknown faces could have been a friend, a confidant, a companion for a few miles or a few years. We pass through each other’s stories like shadows—yet the passing leaves an imprint, however faint. It reminds me that the world is wide, and full of people I have yet to meet, people who might change the colour of my days.

As I walked, this thought settled into me with surprising tenderness: even in a crowd, we are not alone. We share the pavement, the weather, the swirl of November lights, the faint smell of German bratwurst as I drift past the stall in St Enoch’s. We share the silent promise that life is happening around us, constantly, vibrantly, and that we are part of it whether we speak a word or not.

Maybe this is why I’m drawn to strangers in the first place. They represent the untold, the unfamiliar, the chapters unwritten. They remind me that the world is not exhausted, that there are still stories waiting beyond the curve of the road. And in that sense, every unknown face carries its own kind of warmth, a glow of potential, fragile but unmistakable.

By the time I reached the end of my walk, dusk had begun to gather over the rooftops. The city lights flickered alive, scattering gold into the evening air. People hurried past, bags swinging, scarves tucked tight against the cold. I watched them for a moment, feeling that gentle ache again, not loneliness, but a yearning toward connection, however fleeting.

Perhaps we have crossed paths somewhere. Or perhaps our worlds will never quite collide. But the thought of you—another unknown face, another story moving through its own landscape—brings a quiet comfort. In the grand weave of things, we’re all wanderers, drawn toward one another by the faint, persistent warmth of simply being human.

And then another thought rose, soft but steady: Wasn’t it that author, Gwendolyn Brooks in Maud Martha who once wrote about all this life and what shall we do with it? But, the warmth toward unknown faces is not only for this world. This echoes something deeper—a recognition that, in the long light of eternity, many of these unknown faces may one day be familiar. After all, life does not end with our brief crossings on a winter street. With eternity in view, there will be more than enough time to meet all those whose names are held in God’s Book of Life. Time without hurry, time without loss, time to finally see each other as we were meant to be.

Many Christians understand the great promise of Scripture as having both a present and a future glow—a hope we taste now, and a fullness still to come. Paul spoke of the hidden wisdom of God, the things no eye has seen, and no mind could yet imagine, made known in Christ. Throughout Scripture the same thread runs: God preparing something new, something whole—a restored world free from sorrow, death, and decay.

If that is so, then every stranger I pass may be someone I’ll one day greet with recognition instead of curiosity. The woman with the jumper. The man in the wheelchair. The fellow with six books tucked under his arm. And countless others whose paths brushed mine for a breath and then were gone.

We move through this world surrounded by lives known only to God. But the day is coming when loss will have no place, when separation will be no more, and when the warmth of unknown faces will become the joy of known ones—beloved, redeemed, gathered into the same forever.

Most likely we have never met. At least not yet. But in the hope set before us, there is always the promise that someday, in the renewed creation God is shaping even now, we will have all the life we need 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.”

I Corinthians 2:9 (BSB).