Personal Blogs

“Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.”
—Saadi Shirazi

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These words by the Persian poet Saadi have echoed across centuries and cultures for a reason. They offer a clear and enduring truth: to be human is to be bound to others. Not by preference, but by nature. We belong to one another.

In this shrinking world, where a crisis in one country can ripple instantly across continents, his image of humanity as one body is not poetic exaggeration. It’s reality. What one person suffers, the rest of us should feel. Not out of sentimentality, but out of shared essence.

We often speak of the world as a global village. But Saadi reminds us it’s not just a village of trade, travel, and technology; it’s a village of souls. And within it are people who deserve our love and compassion, not because they’re familiar, but because they’re human.

This kinship crosses all lines. The child in Gaza, the grandmother in Glasgow, the teacher in Tehran, we are connected. When one part of the body is wounded, the rest cannot be well. Paul expressed the same truth in his letter to the Corinthians: “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.”

This is the essence of moral life: feeling for others as for us. It’s not about grand gestures. It’s about refusing to grow indifferent. About seeing others not as strangers, but neighbours. Not as burdens, but brothers and sisters.

To be human is to remember we are not islands. We are a village.
And in that village, love is not optional.
It is the pulse of a living soul.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

One day an expert in the law stood up to test Him. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” Jesus replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus said. “Do this and you will live.”

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus took up this question and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.

Now by chance a priest was going down the same road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

So too, when a Levite came to that spot and saw him, he passed by on the other side.

But a Samaritan on a journey came upon him, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Take care of him,’ he said, ‘and on my return I will repay you for any additional expense.’

Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

“The one who showed him mercy,” replied the expert in the law.

Then Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Luke 10: BSB

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. 

2 Chronicled 16:9

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The Moral Issue Behind Evil

Why does God allow evil? It’s a question that echoes through time, across cultures and creeds, and finds a voice in every broken heart. But perhaps it's the wrong question. Perhaps we should be asking: What does evil reveal?

Take your teenage son or daughter. At home, they may be polite, devout, and upright. But what about when they’re alone? Or out with friends, away from your watchful eye? Sometimes, only in your absence will their true character emerge. You might never know who they really are unless you could observe them incognito.

And that, perhaps, is how it goes with God.

There’s a verse in Scripture that 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. ” (2 Chronicles 16:9). This is not the surveillance of a tyrant but the quiet attentiveness of a Father; one who chooses, for a time, to allow freedom. Why? Because only in freedom can love and loyalty be real.

We are on a level playing field. There is no visible hand of God reaching into every moment to stop the liar, the thief, or the tyrant. And in that “absence,” something holy is taking place: our loyalty is being tested. Not just yours or mine, but humanity, past, present and future. The same moral test that was once laid before our first parents in Eden still lingers. The serpent’s whisper wasn’t a contest of strength, it was a question of loyalty. “Did God really say…?” was not a call to arms, but a challenge to trust.

It was the same with Job. The accuser didn’t say, “Let’s see who is stronger—God or me.” That’s easy. Strength can be measured in a moment. Arm-wrestle a man and you’ll soon find the stronger one. But say, “I am more loyal, more honest, more faithful than you,” and suddenly the proof takes a lifetime. This is the moral question at the heart of our suffering: Will we remain loyal to a God we cannot always see, touch, or understand?

This is the drama of life—not played out in cosmic battlefields but in quiet acts of courage, hidden faithfulness, and the refusal to betray love even in darkness. The Apostle Paul touched on this when he wrote ” For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but because of the One who subjected it, in hope (Romans 8:20). Not by accident or chaos, but by design. This futility, this ache we feel for justice and peace and permanence, is not without purpose. It sharpens the soul. It exposes the heart. And it makes space for faith.

God does not want robotic worship or coerced allegiance. He wants to know, do we love Him even when we don’t see Him? Will we walk the right path when no one is looking? Will we remain true in the desert, not just in the garden?

There will come a time when the hidden things are brought into the light, when the testing ends and the eyes of the Father meet ours again. Until then, we live in the tension—between absence and presence, doubt and faith, struggle and hope. But this life is not without meaning. It is the proving ground of the heart. The battle is not about power—it never was. It is about love. About loyalty.

And love that endures when it would be easier to walk away. that is the kind of love that lasts forever.

Bible verses from the BSB Bible.

"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Today, I got talking with a new-found friend and one of the subjects was Rothesay and the Island of Bute. I have a nostalgia for this island that runs deep in my heart that takes me back to a childhood epiphany that is embedded in my memory,

I suppose it must have been the late summer of 1962, Telstar by the Tornadoes had been playing on the radio. I spent the summer days on the idyllic Island of Bute on Scotland’s west coast. We had a rural cabin. It had no running water or electricity. My job was to fill up the water containers from the communal well. Cows would cautiously approach and stare. The smaller calves would shuffle through for front-row viewing. I found their curiosity compelling.

At dusk, we would light paraffin lamps to illuminate the nights. My father would read children’s books borrowed from the library: Chinese Folk Tales, Heidi and 1001 Nights. We were all ears as we ate freshly made pancakes with homemade jam and washed down with small glasses of sweet stout. The lamp caused a sibilant sound as it burned up kerosene. It flickered and fostered sleepiness. It finally slumbered for the evening, and we would retire.

I lay there in my bed watching the stars cascading through the window; all of them. And I wondered if the Chinese farmer boys, or the Bedouin shepherd boys or the milk maids in the Swiss mountains were seeing and feeling the sense of awe that I felt in my heart as the universe entered in.

*****

Childhood memories like that visited me often and reminded me of my spiritual awareness from an early age, albeit in my own childish way.

I had an ache to know who created the stars, the moon, and the beautiful island that was so distant from my industrial town where idle men lingered on street corners like characters from a Lowry painting. Where post-war tenements blocked natural light. Where unkempt dogs savaged through bins for scraps. Where it always seemed, there was better places to be raised.

Years later I read the following verse from the Bible,

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have ordained.

what is man, that you think of him?

What is the son of man, that you care for him?

— Psalm 8:3, 4.

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When Time Grows Precious

A terminal diagnosis has a strange way of shifting your perception of time. It no longer feels abstract or abundant but becomes a delicate currency, something to be spent with deliberate care. In this altered reality, every conversation and interaction carries more weight. I’ve found myself reassessing who I spend time with—not from resentment or selfishness, but from a quiet understanding that my time is no longer open-ended.

This shift in priorities hasn’t gone unnoticed. Some interpret my decisions as cold or dismissive. Others offer unsolicited judgments. That hurts. What’s often misunderstood is that these choices come from a place of clarity, not cruelty—from a desire to spend my remaining time meaningfully, not performatively.

One of the most unexpected consequences of receiving a terminal diagnosis is the sudden reappearance of people from the past. Faces I hadn’t seen or heard from in years are now at my doorstep, in my inbox, or on the end of a tentative phone call. Some arrive with good intentions. Others seem unsure why they’re here. All carry something unresolved.

It would be easy to dismiss these encounters with cynicism—to view them as guilt offerings or panic-driven gestures. And yes, guilt often plays a part. I see it in their eyes. They remember a kindness I once offered or a conversation we never finished. My illness brings that memory into sharp focus, and they reach out, perhaps to ease their conscience more than to comfort me.

Fear plays its role, too. Illness is a powerful mirror. For those who have drifted away, my situation becomes a reminder of their own mortality, a push to tie up loose ends. Some want closure. Others want a more graceful goodbye than the silence they left behind. I understand that impulse, even if it sometimes feels like a transaction.

Then there are the unspoken rules—the social cues that say you must call, must send flowers, must offer a visit. These gestures often come with kindness, but not always with connection. They follow a script, a way of saying “I did my part.” I’ve appreciated them, truly, but they don’t always land where they were intended.

Still, I’ve learned not to judge too quickly. Guilt, fear, obligation—these are not flaws so much as evidence of our humanness. We’re all fumbling our way through relationships, trying to get it right while living with what we got wrong.

What matters now, more than motivation, is presence. Are you here with me, now, honestly? Or just passing through to check a box on your inner list of regrets?

As for me, I’ve chosen to invest in the relationships that feel mutual and real. Time, for me, is no longer a renewable resource. So I offer it where it can be received, where both hearts are present and open.

This doesn’t mean I’ve closed the door to everyone else. It just means I’ve chosen to keep it open only to those who walk in with sincerity and stay awhile—not out of habit or duty, but because they truly want to be there.

If there’s one thing I’ve come to believe deeply, it’s this: We all need to be thoughtful about how we spend our time and with whom. For those facing a terminal illness, that choice becomes sharper, but the principle applies to everyone. Life is short even when it’s long.

And for those who feel moved to reconnect, I would simply ask this—don’t come out of guilt, or to ease discomfort. Come because you want to. Because you care. Because you’re ready to listen, to share, and to be fully here.

Relationships, like time, are fragile. But in their fragility lies their beauty. When they’re honest, when they’re generous, when they’re free of pretence—they carry us, even through the hardest days.

 “When a man stops believing in God he doesn't then believe in nothing, he believes in anything.”
—G.K. Chesterton

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“What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?”

A madman rushes into the marketplace in broad daylight holding a lantern, crying, “I seek God! I seek God!” The bystanders, products of the Enlightenment, sneer. They ask if God is lost or perhaps hiding. Their mockery betrays their confidence: they no longer believe He’s there to be found.

Then the madman turns, and his voice cuts through the laughter.

“We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers.”

He doesn't mean God has literally died, but that belief in Him has been dismantled—dissected by scientific pretension, secularism, and philosophy. Not by accident, but by intent. Humanity, having outgrown the need for the divine, has slain its own foundation.

Yet Nietzsche isn’t cheering. The madman isn’t rejoicing; he is in mourning. For with the death of God comes the collapse of everything once tethered to Him: purpose, morality, transcendence. “What were we doing,” he asks, “when we unchained this earth from its sun?” With that severing, we no longer know which way is up. The world spins, and we spin with it—unmoored, unanchored.

Nietzsche foresaw a crisis not of belief but of meaning. His words are less a dismissal of religion than a lament that modernity has not reckoned with what it has lost. People still speak of right and wrong, of love and justice, as if these remain untouched by the death of their source. The madman’s anguish is not madness, but clarity—a prophetic voice in a culture that doesn’t yet understand its own emptiness.

In later works, Nietzsche attempts to sketch a path forward. He speaks of the Übermensch, the Overman, who must now create meaning in the void. But the shadow of God lingers, and meaning, once severed from the transcendent, begins to collapse under its own weight.

More than a philosophical curiosity, the Madman scene is a warning. The lantern he carries isn’t just a symbol of lost faith—it’s a question burning through the centuries: What happens to humanity when it loses its sense of the divine?

We may now be living in the answer.

A generation drifts in the aftermath. After decades of secular progress, something has gone missing. Many feel it like a ghost in the room. Anxiety, depression, loneliness, and addiction rise—not just as medical conditions but as existential signals. The soul, it turns out, cannot be medicated.

Science and progress have given us extraordinary tools, but not the answers to the oldest questions. Who am I? Why am I here? What is good? What lies beyond death?

We are told to follow our hearts, live our truth, chase success, embrace pleasure. But many are quietly turning away from the noise. The marketplace is losing its grip. In corners of the West, in the quiet of living rooms and the hearts of young couples, there is movement. Some call it a revival—not loud or fanatical, but slow, searching, sincere.

The same lantern is being lit again, not in madness but in longing. Young men, especially, are among those returning. They have grown up in a culture where roles are blurred and purpose elusive. In place of fathers and mentors, algorithms and ideologies have offered substitutes that cannot bless or affirm. The Christian congregations, once dismissed, now appears to some as a sanctuary of coherence—a place where order, calling and purpose still reside.

These aren’t conversions driven by fear, but by thirst. The soul is drawn to meaning the way a body is drawn to water. Christianity, with its rhythms of grace and groundedness, offers not a retreat from reality, but a reawakening to it.

And so, the madman may not have been mad at all. His cry still echoes, not as an obituary for God, but as a diagnosis of our age. In his grief, there was truth. And in that truth, perhaps, a strange kind of hope. For the God we declared dead was never absent. We had only turned away.

Now, in scattered places, people are turning back.

We know we can vanish.

And we know we can return.

I left This World and Returned

I was rolled into the pre-op theatre, the ceiling tiles above blurring slightly as the trolley moved. A nurse checked my details and, checked the place and the mark the surgeon left where the incision would take place. Soon, this surgeon would enter my innermost parts; the parts I have not visited. The mask over my face and the nurse asked me to count to ten. I got as far as four. Then nothing.

What is time in this place I moved to. I woke and like Rip Van Winkle, I didn’t know what day, month, or year it was. Was I dead? Is this the place the Bible character Job referred to as the "renewal"; I don't think so, I don't want to leave like the antelope. Go back to sleep like the sloth more likely.

It wasn’t like sleep, where you slowly come to the surface of your dreams and swim back toward the shore of consciousness. This was more like a door that had slammed shut, a vault in my brain. When it opened again, time itself had been rewritten.

They had pressed the pause button on my brain. It closed down. No dreams, no nightmares no nothing. 

What modern medicine calls anaesthesia is a marvel of science, yet it remains, in some ways, a mystery. General anaesthetic doesn’t simply lull you into rest. It shuts down awareness, sensation, memory, and time. Unlike natural sleep, where the brain cycles through phases and dreams, anaesthesia induces a kind of artificial void—a medically induced coma. It is deliberate, controlled unconsciousness. And in that state, the self disappears.

The drugs work fast. Inhaled agents like sevoflurane or intravenous ones like propofol travel to the brain and begin switching things off—like a janitor switching off lights in a tall building and the lights going out one floor at a time. The cerebral cortex and the thalamus, the parts of the brain responsible for thought, perception, and awareness, are silenced. The hippocampus, the memory-keeper, is blocked from recording anything. The networks that give rise to pain, fear, and movement are unplugged. The result is a total absence of experience.

And yet, we trust them to bring us back.

Waking from anaesthesia feels like being rebooted. The body awakens before the soul quite catches up. For a moment, you’re a blank page, your mind fumbling for the first word of a sentence. There is no sense of having rested. Just a gap. A cut in the filmstrip of memory.

It’s a strange thing—to know that someone, somewhere, has held your life on pause. It humbles you. You realise just how delicate the machinery of self is, and how easily it can be suspended.

But what strikes me most is the trust we place in others when we go under. We give ourselves over, unconscious, and defenceless, to the care of hands we barely know. In that moment, the body becomes a vessel tended by others, and the self—whatever it is that makes me me—disappears into silence.

And then, it returns. Slowly. Unevenly. Like a sunrise after a long night with no stars.

I’m grateful for the science that made that possible. Grateful, too, for the mystery of it—for the reminder that consciousness is both gift and grace. We go through life assuming continuity, thinking of ourselves as uninterrupted. But every so often, someone presses pause, and we are reminded: we are not machines. We are fragile, luminous flickers of being, entrusted to one another.

And when we come back from the void, blinking in the theatre lights, we know something we didn’t know before.

We know we can vanish.

And we know we can return.

“A voice is heard in Ramah,

weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children

and refusing to be comforted,

because they are no more.”

Matthew 2:18 (BSB).

Where the Small Names Sleep

I walked through the Glasgow Necropolis as I often have. It was one of those bright Scottish mornings that softens even the hardest thoughts. The Necropolis, that city of the dead perched above Mother Glasgow; the city of the living, where space not only for memory but for quiet conversation with time itself exists. 

As I made my way among the gravestones, I found myself counting years, not just my own sixty plus but those etched into stone: the tiny, abbreviated lifespans of children lost long ago in a Dickensian age to epidemics like cholera, diphtheria, typhus. Names barely had time to settle and establish into the world before they were carved in stones suggesting they were here.

It’s a strange thing to be old in a place filled with the young who died. I felt not so much survivor’s guilt as survivor’s wonder. I’ve had decades of travel, of reading, of walking beaches at sundown, of writing, of grieving and healing, of faith evaluated and restored. What would any one of these children have become with even half of my years?

My cancer, in that moment, seemed less like an ending and more like a milestone. I don’t know how many more years are allotted to me, but I know now how many I’ve already been given, and I know what a privilege it is to reach an age where you look both forward and back.

The graves made me think of God’s purpose—not as a tidy doctrine, but as a question folded into every name worn smooth by wind, moss, and rain. What becomes of children who never had a chance to choose faith, to assess goodness, to wrestle with meaning? Where are they in the great scheme of things?

Jesus once said, “Let the little children come to me... for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” I must believe that children taken early are held in a mercy deeper than we can grasp. They are not forgotten; they are not lost to God . If anything, it is we who are still lost, walking among headstones trying to make sense of the living and the dead.

There’s a sobering democracy in cemeteries. All names are equal here, whether child or elder, rich, or poor, known, or unknown. We all close our eyes and rest with our forebears. And yet, those of us still walking have something the dead do not: time. Time to reflect, to forgive, to change. Time to be grateful. My cancer has made me aware of time—not just its scarcity, but its richness.

So, I keep walking, not just through the Necropolis, but through each day, carrying with me the invisible company of children who never saw their coming-of-age birthdays or perceived  the invisible grace of a God.

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Ten days in hospital. That’s enough to make anyone long for a cave in the Highlands, or at least a pair of noise-cancelling headphones.

Don’t get me wrong. The NHS staff are wonderful, saints, if you don’t mind me saying.  But the challenge isn’t just the illness, it’s the endless noise. Groans in the night, alarms pinging like a malfunctioning pinball machine, and televisions blaring mind-numbing chat shows and repeats of Bonanza that could erode your will to live faster than the illness itself. It seems every patient is tuned in to the same channel, hypnotised by daytime soaps where everyone shouts, cries, or throws fits of anger. Why do they expose themselves to this stuff. Is life not bad enough without action replays at leisure time?

I remember thinking, not for the first time: Is peace and quiet too much to ask for when you’re unwell? My idea of healing involves being pain-free and reading a good book in silence.

The same plea rises in me when I board a flight. Please, no hen nights. No lads on tour. Let me sit beside someone who reads—someone who appreciates silence as an art form.

Once, I dared to hope. I was flying somewhere peaceful (or so I thought), and there they were—The Over 50s women after divorce club. Don’t be fooled by the name. I thought I’d dodged a bullet. “At last,” I told myself, But alas, they were a force to be reckoned with. Loud, swearing, knocking back miniature gin bottles like it was Blackpool on a Friday night. And the steward? Instead of calming them down, he joined in—winding them up further, rewarding their air bound riot with extra snacks and applause.

And there I was, clutching my book, praying for a parachute.

One day—yes, one day—I’ll invest in those blessed noise-cancelling headphones. I may not have peace on Earth, but at least I’ll have it in my ears. But here I am, back in my inner sanctum, in my comfortable chair in silence.

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"Empati väntar inte på det perfekta ögonblicket."

(Empathy doesn’t wait for the perfect moment).

It was a summer in the late nineties, a weekend where time felt unrushed and the world was a gentler, more mysterious place. I was with my son and two of his friends, heading from Göteborg toward Stockholm. Somewhere along the way, we decided to stop in Hjo, a quiet, picturesque town perched at the edge of Lake Vättern, where the blue water simmered like something out of a postcard.

We sat together in the town square, enjoying snacks and the peculiar sweetness of Swedish summer light. That’s when you appeared—a girl of perhaps fourteen—so naturally present, as if you had been there all along, as if you belonged in the centre of our small world, yet you weren’t quite part of it.

You chose a seat close to us and stayed where you were, how do you say,  tjuvlyssnade på vårt samtal? Maybe you were curious about these boys who had come into your town, strangers with strange accents and easy laughter. Maybe you were lonely, aching for a connection, someone to talk to beyond the borders of your usual days.

When we left Hjo, I thought little of the fleeting moment at first. But as we drove off toward the highway, my thoughts kept circling back to you. The gentle way you made your presence known. The quiet possibility you held in your hands, as though hoping we might offer you a tiny bridge to another world.

And I felt it then—that ache that arrives too late: I could have invited you to write to my daughter back home or a young friend, to anyone who might have kept a warm thread of connection running between you and some faraway place. I could have reached out in that simple human way that says, you matter.

Yet at the time, I had not thought to do it. The thought came too slowly, after we had left Hjo behind us. The owl of Minerva flies at dusk, as they say—we rarely grasp the fullness of a moment until it’s already gone.

Decades have passed since then, but you still dance in my memory, a small and radiant reminder of what it means to be human. To long for contact. To matter to someone. Perhaps you have long since forgotten us, or perhaps our visit was tucked away into your own summer memories, like a fragile photograph in an album.

And perhaps too, across all this time and distance, my delayed empathy reaches you in some unspoken way. Perhaps we are all like that—constantly crossing paths with strangers who need to be seen, to be invited into our circle for a moment, to feel they belong.

That summer day in Hjo taught me that empathy cannot wait for perfect timing. It cannot wait for dusk.

And still, you dance forever in my head.

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“And each man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree,

with no one to frighten him.  — Micah 4: 4

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"We Cannot Go on Like This."

When Chekhov’s Vanya utters those heart-breaking words, “We cannot go on like this” He speaks for more than one disillusioned soul on a rural Russian estate. His cry reflects a deeper, ageless anxiety that we recognize today as well; one that has only grown louder in our modern world.

Chekhov wrote Uncle Vanya at a time when Europe had embraced the ideals of reason and progress but still felt the shadows of spiritual emptiness and human cruelty. Vanya’s lament is not just personal, but prophetic: a symbol of humanity at a crossroads, hands on the door to an uncertain future.

The Enlightenment, with all its light and logic, declared that God was unnecessary, even dead, as Nietzsche famously put it. Humanity crowned itself sovereign over its own destiny. Confident that reason alone would make the world safer, freer, and happier, society hoped for a new dawn. But in discarding the divine, we also invited unforeseen troubles into our world: wars of unprecedented scale, ideologies that crushed millions, and a world spinning faster into chaos and fear.

And so, Vanya’s exhausted plea, “We cannot go on like this,” becomes a metaphor for the human soul left hollow when it places too much faith in human intellect and too little in humility, compassion, or higher purpose. What Chekhov’s story reminds us of is that reason without Godly wisdom is light without warmth; it can dazzle as much as it can destroy.

Yet in Uncle Vanya, after his desperate cry, Sonya offers a gentle, steadfast reply: they will go on. They will work. They will wait for a better world they may never live to see. Even when all seems lost, one treasure remains — hope.

And so too for us. Even as our modern world groans under the weight of its troubles, environmental, moral, and technological, we need not collapse into cynicism or despair. True hope invites us to embrace our humanity anew, to rekindle compassion in a time of chaos, and to look to God’s Kingdom as the only real and enduring solution. It is this Kingdom — as promised in Scripture — that will wipe away every tear and put an end to every cry of anguish. Only then will the exhausted soul of humanity find its lasting peace.

“During the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up another kingdom. It will never be destroyed. And it will not be given to another group of people. This kingdom will crush all the other kingdoms. It will bring them to an end. But that kingdom itself will continue forever.”

                                                           —Daniel 2:44

Scripture quotations taken from the International Children’s Bible®. Copyright © [1986] by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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A Future Redress 

In the previous blog I wrote about my visit to the Glasgow Necropolis and the small graves that dot its hillsides. Many of these graves belong to children who perished because of one simple, tragic reason: the lack of clean water and decent sanitation. Crowded into damp, narrow tenements and surrounded by overflowing drains, they succumbed to epidemics that we now know could have been prevented by the most basic of public health measures. Behind those early deaths lies a heart-breaking lack of foreknowledge, decisions made by city fathers who failed to look past their own moment into the futures they were shaping.

And as I reflect on that loss, I cannot help but see a new kind of crisis unfolding — one equally born of short-sighted invention and careless enthusiasm. The very material that once promised to make our lives easier and more affordable, plastic, is slowly becoming a kind of invisible weapon. Microplastics now accumulate in our bodies, including in our brains — carried into us by the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. Where Glasgow’s insecure slums fostered cholera and typhus, we face a more diffuse and lasting threat, a kind of low-dose toxicity leaking into every cell.

And so, I wonder, much as I do when I look up at those weathered stones in the necropolis: did those inventors ever truly foresee the human cost of their innovations? Did Leo Baekeland, who gave us Bakelite in 1907, have any inkling that more than a century later his plastic descendants would drift into our oceans and be found embedded in the tissues of our children? Could the designers of the atom bomb have imagined that nuclear power would also leave behind a legacy of waste that defies the lifespan of civilisations? In both cases, the power to make and to destroy arrived hand in hand — and in both, the darker consequences took decades to come into focus.

The difference is that Glasgow’s cholera was visible in its suffering, forcing reform. Plastic’s contamination is more subtle, more insidious. It’s a slow constriction, an “unintentional weapon,” lodged in the most private spaces of the human body. And because we cannot see it as we once saw the foul water or crowded rooms, we are tempted to ignore the evidence. But like those long-gone children and their unmarked graves, this new toll will one day demand a reckoning. Future generations may look back on us and wonder how we failed to foresee the cost of the choices we embraced so eagerly.

What this moment requires is the kind of care and forethought that was too long delayed in Glasgow. If we want to spare those who come after us from a new necropolis, one built not of stone and soil, but of invisible particles and mounting illness, we must recognize that progress cannot simply mean invention. It must also mean responsibility, and the will to act before today’s brilliance becomes tomorrow’s burden. Interestingly, the Bible speaks of a judgement period that comes at a time when man is in the process of ruining the planet:

“And the nations were enraged, and Your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and to give the reward to Your servants, the prophets, and to the saints, and to those fearing Your name, the small and the great, and to destroy those who are destroying the earth." Revelation 11:18 BSB.

"Do you think that just believing there’s one God is going to get you anywhere?

 The demons believe that, too, and it terrifies them!"

James 2:19 — The Voice

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How Do You See Yourself?

“I’m a good person,” we often say. Perhaps we donate to charity, give up our seat for an elderly passenger on the bus, or offer a kind word when someone looks downcast. And these are good, important things. But what if we look deeper? What lies beneath these outward gestures of goodness?

There’s a sobering conversation in John 3 between Jesus and a man named Nicodemus. They talk about judgment — and as a foregone conclusion, condemnation. It’s not a comfortable discussion. But let’s look closely at a small part of it. Here’s a version of that passage from The Voice Bible:

“Why does God allow for judgment and condemnation?” Jesus asks. Then continues, “Because the Light, sent from God, pierced through the world’s darkness to expose ill motives, hatred, gossip, greed, violence, and the like. Still some people preferred the darkness over the light because their actions were dark. Some of humankind hated the light.”

That’s a jarring truth to take in. The words draw a clear picture — two choices before every one of us: Light or darkness. And this isn’t about surface-level goodness or manners. It’s deeper. It’s an invitation to hold ourselves up to the light and let it show us who we really are.

You might say, “That’s for other people; people who hate or hurt.” But the passage reminds us that darkness can be subtle. Ill motives, gossip, hatred, greed — these can hide even behind a kind smile or a weekly visit to church. The issue is not about the appearance of being good; it’s about what we allow to live unchallenged in our hearts.

And that can feel uncomfortable. Even for those who have been part of a faith community for years, who feel they are “saved” simply by attending church, a Kingdom Hall, or a house meeting, there can be a false sense of security. Going through motions isn’t a cure for darkness. It’s what we do with the light that matters.

This is a call for self-scrutiny, not condemnation. It’s an opportunity. A chance to recognize where we might still “love the dark,” however subtly, and to make a move toward something better. Many pray but never feel God’s presence; often, that’s because they haven’t yet opened the hidden corners of their hearts to the light.

So, let this be an encouragement. The light is here, waiting. It’s an invitation to live in the light fully and to face those hidden places honestly and make room for a deeper kind of goodness, one that shines through our hearts as well as our hands.

Of course, here’s a warm and practical concluding thought you could add to the end of the essay:

Are we willing to pray to God like one person who was willing to say, “Search me, and show me where my heart still leans toward the dark.”

That kind of prayer opens the way for real change. It’s not about wallowing in guilt or fear of condemnation; it’s about stepping into the light with a heart that’s ready to grow.

Perhaps this week, take a quiet moment to reflect and ask yourself, “What habits, thoughts, or attitudes have I overlooked or excused that don’t belong in the light?” Write them down if it helps. Then, one by one, offer them up in prayer, choosing to let God’s light exposes and heals.

And don’t walk this path alone. Reach out to someone you trust: a mentor, a close friend — someone who can encourage you as you move toward the light. Transformation is a process, and every small, sincere step matters. You can contact me at when2aregathered@proton.me if you need any support.

Remember, the light is not there to shame you; it’s there to set you free. The very fact you’re seeking it is proof that your heart is open. That’s where change begins.

Scriptures taken from The Voice Bible.
Copyright © 2012 by Ecclesia Bible Society.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

He has shown you, O man, what is good. 

And what does the LORD require of you but to act justly, 

to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6: 8 BSB.

Justice, Woven Through Us

When I was young—long before I could articulate why—I had a deep instinct for justice. Not just the punitive kind, but something gentler, older, more beautiful: the kind that rights wrongs not by vengeance but by restoring balance, by lifting the bowed head, by speaking truth softly but firmly into the world. It was around that time that I came across a passage from the English jurist William Blackstone, whose name still lingers with quiet gravity in the history of law.

He wrote:

“The Creator 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.”

—William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 1, Section 2

That struck me with force. I didn’t understand it in full then, but something in me responded. It was as though he’d named what I had already begun to feel—that justice is not an external code imposed from above, but something woven into us. A thread of divine order stitched through our conscience and joy, reminding us that real happiness cannot be had without honouring what is right.

That quote stayed with me for decades. Through my own experiences of injustice and mercy, through times when I failed to act justly, and through moments when I was on the receiving end of kindness that tilted the scales in my favour.

I’m lying on top of the bed now, under the weight of cancer and the flu. The body is aching, but the spirit still listens. I’ve been moved this morning by the reflections of the Scottish Judge, Rita Rae on the BBCs Desert Island Discs. Her justice rings with the same conviction Blackstone voiced centuries earlier. Her stories of courtroom moments and moral insights into justice reminded me again that justice is never just about rules or verdicts—it’s about people. Broken, hopeful, sometimes guilty people. People who need to be seen with both clarity and compassion like the man whose acquittal changed his life as he moved on an academic career

Perhaps that’s what Blackstone meant. That justice, insight and compassion are not strangers. That one leads to the other, like daylight following the turning of the earth. And maybe that’s why it moved me so deeply as a boy: because justice, when it’s real, feels like the world being mended.

Desert Island Discs - Rita Rae, Lady Rae, lawyer and judge - BBC Sounds