There is one occasion in the year when we gather to watch the figure of a man on the cross outlined starkly against the fading light and there is always a thoughtful child who asks the perennial question, ‘Why do we call Good Friday “good”?’ It is a profound question. Another way of putting it is, ‘If Jesus was a man of love why was he killed? And if this good man was killed, why […]
Sometimes I get a card that says ‘I love you.’ It is always a shock when someone writes or says those most special words. Sometimes they are said between friends and relations in a most beautifully meaningful way. Whereas I never said ‘I love you’ to my father before he died, I said it repeatedly to my mother during the last precious years of our time together. It is so important to tell people that […]
When it comes to buying a suit, I’m an off-the-peg kind of customer. I’m neither a big man nor a small man – I’m somewhere in the middle. I was recently trying on a suit-jacket, in a local store. I was feeling pressurised by the sales assistant to purchase a suit that I did not feel comfortable in – something that wasn’t really ‘me’. I resisted the pressure and decided to wait for another day […]