Life Stories

 In a couple of days it’s the 2^nd annual family celebration of Macintosh Day.  Rox and I got to thinking last year about how, with our oldest about to start school, we wanted to embed in our kids a really strong vision of our family values and identity.  Since Jolie and Ezra both have winter birthdays, a summer celebration on our anniversary seemed a good idea.  Hence, on the 6^th of August every year we shall spend the day just with our little clan, good food, giving gifts and building our own traditions to make the occasion special.

One of the things we want to do is to tell our story.  You may have a mind for facts and figures, but stories have a way of sinking far more deeply into the memory.  We want our kids to understand that they are a part of the story God has been writing in our family.  We want these stories of God’s goodness to us to outlive us and outlast us.  And we want our kids to grow up to be storytellers too – to know that every new age and stage of their lives are stories waiting to be written. 

I’ve used this space to record some special stories – stories of God’s faithfulness through long years, stories of His providence and care for us in the mundane and the miraculous.  And I thought I would take the opportunity to add to the anthology.  There are of course things I won’t share here.  We believe in a God who engages with us in every area of life, from the private to the professional, and not everything is for public consumption.  Frankly, some of my favourite stories – of God’s favour on my career, of his kindness at work in friendship and family relationships – are best shared one to one.

So with all of that said, you can feel free to read on.  It may feel like a slide show from a holiday you weren’t on.  Things that mean a lot to those that lived through them, that lose their impact with a little distance.  Or maybe it’ll prompt you to think about your own stories.  If you’re a follower, maybe you’ll be reminded to look back and trace the grace of God at work in your own life.  If you’re not yet persuaded about all things Jesus, maybe you can just count these stories as the accounts of witnesses to things you’ve not yet seen and heard.  But if so, I’d invite you to bear in mind that God has no favourites.  Or rather, we’re all His favourites.  He loves the Macintoshes, of that I am sure.  But I’m also convinced that stories like ours are not just celebrations but invitations.  An invitation to give over the movie rights to your life, and to watch on in awe as the master director work wonders with the ordinary stuff of your every day.

What's in a name?

A long time ago, we fell in love and got married.  Then we decided to start a family.

We two became three with the arrival of Jolie Liana - our beautiful answer from God.  You can read the twists and turns of her little story here.  Her name, we hope, captures something of that story - the beauty of new life, longings fulfilled, God's faithfulness revealed in the fullness of time.

We three became four when our Ezra Michael popped out on the kitchen floor.  His story we wrote about here and here  And we hope his name describes something of that story, too - how God is our helper in everything, big and small.

You may think they're a little "out there" (and, with all affection, I honestly don't really care) but we love those names.  They described the story of our lives at the point of each of their arrivals, but they also set a tone and a direction for our family life as the kids have grown and their colourful and vibrant characters and personalities have emerged.

And now four have become five, with the arrival of Shiloh Hope.

The story of our lives relevant to this new baby is of course tied up in the remarkable circumstances we've all been navigating these past few months.  Shiloh is our lockdown baby, born surrounded by people in masks, limited in who she will meet and for how long and at what distance.  She's being born into a world where people are living in fear of death and disease, in fear of economic collapse, or indeed both.  She's also being born into a world bubbling with discontent, marches in the streets, protests and counter-protests.  (The astute among you may have noted that Shiloh in US History was the site of the bloodiest battle of the civil war - we chose her name before these protests started but its relevance to this cultural moment is curious to say the least!)

The world Shiloh is being born into is dramatically different to what we imagined when we first looked forward to her arrival.  But of course, there is nothing new under the sun - history repeats.  This virus seems shocking to us but our ancestors knew waves of plague and pestilence as just a part of life in the world as it is.  These marches and all the spin-off and ripple effects seem new to us but uprisings of the oppressed and movements for change and even civil unrest have equally been a cyclic feature of human history.

When in first few centuries AD plague ripped through Rome, the rich and the powerful ran for the hills - self isolating in comfort.  The people who stayed behind were largely those too poor to have anywhere else to go.  But rumour had it there another group who stayed.  A small Jewish sect whose adherents believed fervently that this life was not the end, whose hope was founded on something other than their health and wealth in this life, who stayed behind to care for the sick and the dying who had been abandoned.  These peculiar people, who came to be known as Christians (initially as a derogatory term) appeared to have an ability to endure all manner of trials whilst maintaining hope - you might even call it an infectious hope. 

This Christian hope transcended the tragedies of plague and disease and even death.  And it transformed a misfit band of followers of a dead rabbai into a movement which today stretches to every corner of the world.

It also had a unique power and persistence in reaching outcasts and outsiders.  No barrier was too high for Christian hope to scale, no chasm too wide for Christian hope to bridge.  The first non-Jewish convert to Christianity was a man called Simeon - black, of pagan religious origins, and a eunuch (i.e. a sexual minority, of sorts).  And yet where human nature would emphasise difference, distance and division, the Spirit of God moved heaven and earth to bring unity and diversity.  (One might even put it that, from the very start of the Jesus Movement, "black lives mattered".)  The hope of the gospel was, and always has been, for everyone.

We all need hope - especially right now.  Hope is a virtue which is only necessary when things are hard.  You don't need hope when things are fine.  When you have all you need, maybe even all you want, you don't need to hope for anything else.  You need hope when the alternative is hopelessness.  

And hope is and always has been one of the things which should mark and define someone who has had their life shaken up by Jesus.  When St Peter wrote to some of the first Christian believers in the first century AD, he was writing to people who were being persecuted - people for whom financial ruin, physical punishment, imprisonment or even death were daily possibilities.  And he said that they should be ready to give an answer for the hope that they have.  In other words, this hope that they had in the midst of sorrow and suffering was a hope so luminescent that it was inevitable they would be asked to explain it.

In this time of upheaval a lot of things on which we tend to rely are suddenly revealed to be less stable than we had thought.  Particular jobs and indeed whole industries have disappeared, almost overnight.  Public services and cultural norms that we thought would always be there because they always have, all of a sudden look completely different.  Relational networks that keep us emotionally and mentally healthy are all of a sudden filtered through a screen and a wifi connection, straining friendships, separating families and distancing us from our colleagues and acquaintances.  Even our health, which we don't even think of until it's gone, is suddenly up in the balance.  We find ourselves calculating our odds, mortality rates, co-morbidities, risk factors.  These circumstances - tragic and painful though they are - allow us to see what it is we depend on.  What is it that we can't bear the thought of losing?  What is it that we can't cope with being unable to rely upon?

For us, we've been sharply reminded that when all else could be lost - hypothetically for most, but very tangibly for some - our hope remains.  Our hope is not in our health or our wealth.  Our hope is not in the fragile idolatry of particular politicians or popular movements.  It's in Jesus.  He is our "Shiloh Hope".  He is our hope that won't disappoint, our hope that assures us even in delay and deferment, our hope that finds us even in displacement and dislocation.

Shiloh was a place in ancient Israel where the people went to worship long before the temple was established in Jerusalem - it was a makeshift place, a temporary location for God's presence.  In this season where our rhythms of gathering in community to worship have been disrupted, and we've had to adjust to new realities of distance and separation from spiritual and biological family alike, Shiloh reminds us that though the "where" and the "how" might change, God is always seeking to connect with His people.  Seek, and you will find.

Shiloh was also a word spoken by a man called Jacob to his son Judah, which pointed forward through the generations to the coming of the great Hope of the world - Jesus.  It's meaning holds in tension the reality of waiting in the "not yet", longing for a Kingdom not yet come, together with the certainty of the Hope that will be realised "when Shiloh comes".  The promise of Shiloh was a promise that though there might be twists and turns and unexpected detours in the story, Jesus always comes through.

Our Hope is not generic.  It's not well-intentioned but groundless optimism.  It's not nebulous and unsubstantiated confidence in human progression.  Our hope is not in ourselves, far from it.  If anything these months have been proof again of both the fragility of our lives and the fallibility of our legacies.  Our hope is in a saviour who rescues us, in spite of ourselves.  Our hope is in the one who will one day draw all of history to a conclusion where every ill-effect is redeemed and every day of sorrow subverted.  Our hope is in Jesus, who calms the storms, raises up the downtrodden, binds up the brokenhearted and meets our sin and sickness not with condemnation but with reconciliation and redemption.  Our hope is in the one who stands in the middle of the plague and, with all authority, says "all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well".

Shiloh is coming.  Hope is here.  

Good Friday

It’s not good, is it?  There’s an understatement.

Death after death after death after hundreds of deaths.  Ominous clouds of fear and anxiety cover the world.  Vital signs on medical devices and financial spreadsheets crashing in tandem.  The lonely and the lost, the unseen and the unknown confined to their homes, to be seen even less, known even less.  A society already disconnected, having what few bonds of brotherhood that remain, forcibly severed by the necessity of separating our lives in order to preserve them.  It’s not good in the slightest.

And yet the calendar insists this is Good Friday.  Though the upheaval to our daily routines has caused the days of the week to lose all meaning, I’m willing to be convinced it may well be Friday.  But it’s not good.

I catch myself thinking this is no way to celebrate Easter.  And yet, as my mind wanders down that rabbit trail, I wonder if that’s true at all.

All of us, including the healthy, the young, the fit, the strong – those we’ve come to describe cautiously as “relatively low risk” – are sacrificing simple pleasures and freedoms we’ve taken for granted our whole lives.  And we do so not principally for our own sake (though in part, we do) but mainly for the sake of the sick, the old and the already-weakened.

Maybe, in some way, we can understand something of the Good Friday sacrifice by the one who had it all, who gave up his freedoms for people in desperate need.

Families are keeping themselves separated, parents from children, sibling from sibling, grandparent from grandchild.  Though it breaks our hearts, we’re putting distance between ourselves and those to whom we feel the closest bonds.

Maybe, in some way, we understand something of the Father and Son who, on Good Friday, turned their faces from each other and separated themselves for the sake of the world.

Frontline workers, carers, doctors, nurses and many others who receive even less adulation are putting themselves in harm’s way to serve and to save those who they don’t even know.  Not their mother, but yours.  Not their brother, but yours.

Maybe, in some way, they’re a modern parable of the Good Friday saviour, who could have chosen safety but instead chose suffering, to protect and to rescue even those who misunderstood, misrepresented or mistreated him.

Some of those frontline workers are not those who would have considered themselves heroes.  They are paid many times less than some others.  They are in jobs less sought after, careers less craved.  Yet when push comes to shove they are the ones deemed essential to our collective survival.

Maybe, in some way, they remind us of the rejected one, the discarded one, who on Good Friday became the cornerstone, the keystone, the foundation on which our lives rest.

Maybe, on reflection, this is a pretty apt way to mark Good Friday.

Good Friday was a day of mourning, where the spectre of death loomed large.

And as Friday spilled into Saturday, the noise faded, the people dispersed and all that was left was the stone dead silence of the tomb.

And then finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Easter Saturday stumbled, grieving, sobbing, into Sunday.  Resurrection Sunday.  Where from the tomb – the very notion of death itself – burst out life, bright and breathing.

Life out of death.  Victory out of the jaws of defeat.  A new way forward, when all hope had seemed lost.

In our home we’re a few weeks away from what will – probably – be a lockdown labour.  Our third child will be a daughter of the quarantine.  A CoronaBaby.

This Easter we’re constantly reminded in the most physical and visceral of ways that even in a time of death and despair, life bursts forth.

This Friday might not seem very “good” at all.  But on the other side of every tearful, fearful Friday, is a Resurrection Sunday.  

So even amidst the chaos this Good Friday, have a happy and above all a hopeful Easter.  There is always hope.  Always.  Friday is never the end of the story.

X

A 10 Year Old Rose

10 years ago I bought a girl a rose.  She, being a bit sentimental, kept it in her room and pressed it into an old book on her shelf.

The girl with the rose became my wife, and a few years later she became a mother to our delicious Jolie Liana.  I've written about that little story before.  Later, by the grace of God, we were expecting again - another story that I shared a wee while back.

But the thing is, when you follow Jesus, you find that the stories keep on coming.  Little miracles, inexplicable coincidences, and a thousand subtle signs of the hand of God at work in the life of a very ordinary little family.

A lot has happened since that last post, too much to write here, so let me cut it to the highlights.

Expecting a baby, we needed to move.  We found a house we loved, and we noted our interest.  Friends of ours who we shared our flat with were going to buy us out.  We prayed and prayed that they would get approved so that our plans could go through.  They didn't.

So onto the market we went.  The sellers told us the very latest they could hold our new house for us was the end of June.  Our solicitor told us there was absolutely no chance of getting our flat sold in that time.

But we prayed.

Our flat sold in just over 4 days.  The offer came through - a really generous offer - with one condition: can we guarantee to be moved out by the end of June?  It couldn't happen... but then it did.  So there we were in our new home, absolutely amazed.

God spoke to us (hear me out) and told us we were having a boy.  Seriously.  Roxy saw a picture in her mind's eye, and someone else came right up and told us the same thing.  We were having a boy.  And the thing was, it was only boys names we could come up with... and one in particular stuck, that we really liked.

I'm the skeptical sort so I'll be the first to say it: any guess has got a pretty much 50/50 chance of being right.  But, for what it's worth, the scan in due course confirmed: it's a boy!

So we started planning for this baby.  Roxy wanted to take a full year's maternity leave.  I (being the party pooper) started to look at the finances of it all, and really wasn't sure we could manage it.

But we prayed.

And out of the blue came a generous gift from someone who didn't know anything about our situation.  And suddenly the pressure was off for maternity leave.  We couldn't afford it... but then we could.

I mentioned that we'd chosen a name.  Ezra.  It's from the Hebrew language, and means "help".  You can see why we were keen, given what God had done for us over the summer, to mark and remember how he'd helped us!

Weeks and weeks later, the name had really stuck.  It was decided.

And then, clearing out one of the last boxes from our move, we came across an old bible.  And opening up that old bible, we saw an old rose, pressed into the pages.  And beneath that old rose, we saw a name.



10 years ago, when our relationship was just weeks old, God knew the name of our little boy.

I don't know where you are with God.  Maybe you think I'm crazy.  Or maybe you think it's all part of some great nebulous spiritual mystery called "the universe".  But I reckon it's got the fingerprints of Jesus all over it.

You see, that's why I write down these stories.  It's not just to get all soppy, and it's certainly not to airbrush my life and pretend that it's all sunshine and rainbows.  It's because I want everyone - and especially my kids, reading these one day - to know.  My God isn't a concept of mythology.  He's not a figment of the unenlightened imagination.  He's not a force for the subjugation of the masses or a crutch for those unable to face a world devoid of meaning.  He's real.  He's alive.  And if you're honestly looking for his presence in your life, I honestly believe you'll find it.

I don't want my kids to live off of the God-stories that Roxy and I tell them.  I want them to go and live their lives with Jesus and experience their own God-stories every day.  I want them to discover for themselves that God is way bigger than we realise, way nicer than we think, and loves us way more than we can ever deserve.

10 years ago I bought a girl a rose.  The rest... is His story.

A Tiny Impossibility

Miracles come in all shapes and sizes.

Being a Dad to our little girl Jolie has taught me over and again to celebrate the wonder of every day, the ordinary stuff of life that, when you step back and look at it fresh, really is amazing.

Theologically it’s also true that miracles aren’t only restricted to the dramatic and the inexplicable.  When you understand that God is the mover and the shaker behind every good and pleasant thing, you realise that every little thing is a miraculous gift of His grace.

It was two years this Easter since we found out that we were expecting Jolie Liana – our beautiful answer from God.  I wrote about that miraculous little journey here.

Since then – as every parent will know – it’s been a whirlwind.  An exhausting, occasionally infuriating, mostly hilarious and always heart-melting whirlwind.

We liked her so much we wanted to make another.

But bodies, biology and the sovereignty of God don’t always line up as we’d like them to, at least not at first.  Something wasn't right so we got checked out.  It turned out that Roxy’s blood was showing hormone levels that made it “impossible to conceive”.

Well, that sucks.

So we prayed.

And we asked some of those close to us to pray.

Call it a miracle, call it a dodgy blood test, call it whatever you want.

It turns out we’re pregnant.  (Well, Roxy is… you know what I mean.)

And not even just a little bit.  From the size of that little person, we know that at the very moment Roxy’s blood was tested, with the result that it would be “impossible” for us to have another baby any time soon… our second tiny Macintosh was already hidden away in there, waiting to make an appearance.

Even though he/she was apparently impossible.

When you’re following Jesus, and life throws the word “impossible” at you, it’s best to take that with a pinch of salt.

Jesus didn’t have to bless us with this baby.  We'd still be gladly following Jesus if he'd said "no" to those prayers.  We know the other side too - the pain of waiting and not seeing what you hope for come to be.

But it's pretty wonderful to be reminded again that when Jesus says "yes" there is nothing that will stand in the way.

Is there something in your life that everything and everyone tells you is impossible?  Why not take it to God.  There's a good chance He's going to disagree.

Nothing is impossible with God (Luke 1:37)

Refusing To Die (Except That One Time)

Everyone loves a drama.

There are few things quite so satisfying as a guns blazing action thriller where the hero, whether rough diamond Bruce Willis of the Die Hard years or the timelessly suave Bond, wins out in the face of ever lengthening odds.  The against-all-odds victory speaks to something deep within the human psyche.  The bible teaches that despite the ruinous effect of generations of sin, beneath our warped and wounded exterior there is still visible the discernible image of God, just as the weathered foundation stones on the hillside testify to an ancient royal residence.  For this reason, the deepest truths of eternity echo through culture, and the motif of victory snatched from the jaws of defeat is no exception.

As more than one villain has said to the hero, "why won't you die?".  The imminent "death" of God has been foreseen in every generation.  And yet billions persist in following Jesus.  I have written before about the rational basis for belief in God, and specifically for personal faith in Jesus Christ.  The objective truth and subjective reality of Christian faith is one thing I will stake my life upon.

But the issue takes on a different feel when viewed from the perspective of God himself.  We who love Jesus, knowing the tangible reality of the love of God, can panic when those who wield soft and hard power in our culture seem hell-bent on the eradication of God.  But what the Lord has been reminding me of insistently recently is the doctrine of His sovereignty.

God, no matter what odds He fights against, like every great hero, refuses to die.  No matter what stands in His way, no matter how it looks to the bystander, He will reach his goal and satisfy His purpose in human history.

When in the garden mankind fell, breaking their connection with God to the ruin of themselves and the world over which they had been given authority, the game was up. By all accounts, it seemed God had failed.  And yet, He found a way through: re establishing relationship, partially at first, with the promise of fuller and freer connection to come.

His purpose becomes clearer with Abraham.  God promised that He would father the nation of Israel, who would be a missional beacon of light to the entire world.  Fine promises, but they rang a discordant note for the elderly barren couple to whom they were given.  The audience again thinks the game is up: why box yourself in to a corner like that, God?  Why set up the impossible as your chosen way forward?  It can't happen!  And yet we find that God is the master of life, and if He chooses to bring it forth nothing, not even a barren womb, can prevent it.

When Moses stood, a stuttering old man without reputation and without the trust of his own people, and addressed the God-king of the global superpower of the day, and Pharaoh said no... There was no way Israel would escape.  Gods chosen people would remain captive to a foreign power as a sign of the subservient weakness of Israel and her God.  But God's purposes will not be frustrated.  In a building crescendo of defiance, power and ultimately lethal force, the warrior of heaven proved that He alone was God, and the people were freed.

Years later God's purposes again appear to hang by a thread.  The royal line of David, through whom would come the messiah, the saviour, has been subject to familial genocide so thorough that one young boy, Joash, is the only descendant who remains.  All that stands between the powers of darkness and a final, fatal victory for evil, is a toddler.  And yet God conspires to save his life, to anoint him as King, and to carry on a line of descendants leading directly to Christ Jesus.

Again and again we find God backed in to a corner, the armies of evil raised against him, He having deliberately chosen to manifest His plan and purpose in weak, vulnerable people with no human hope of success... Only for victory to be His once more.

In our more recent history we see the same pattern.

How could authentic faith survive the oppressive hypocrisy and abuse of the politically powerful medieval church?  How could anything real or good make it out of an institution so tainted and defiled?  The church was dead.  But suddenly, out of no where, again and again, God brings revival.  Luther and Calvin, Methodism, Quakerism, the Salvation Army, the Charismatic Movement.  New life, budding from what so many had thought was a dead branch.  God's purposes cannot be held back.

Upon detecting every societal and philosophical shifting wind people have rushed to read the church her last rites.  From the violence and senseless destruction of the Great War, to the rejection of overarching or objective truth as post-modernism set in.  The hubristic conceit of man in the idolatry of the scientific process is the latest thing to be cast as the ecclesiological grim reaper.  Nobody, goes the argument, can still believe this medieval nonsense beneath the microscope of secular humanism and new atheism.  Or more accurately, anyone who retains faith despite those conditions is stupid, incapable of rational analysis, and even dangerous (e.g. Mr Dawkins thoughts on equating the teaching of faith to ones children  with child abuse).

And yet God refuses to die.

Except once.

'No one takes my life, but I willingly lay it down'.

Lest we see God as a puppeteer, or as a manipulative gamer orchestrating a drama of pawns and pieces, He makes His own grand entrance on to the scene in the form of Jesus.  Hanging, nailed to a piece of wood, bleeding and bruised, suffocating under his own weight, the God who created the cosmos submitted Himself to die the shameful death of an ancient near-eastern criminal.

As the disciples gathered around the smouldering embers of all that they had hoped and planned for, they saw no sign of the glory behind the story.  God was dead.

Suddenly it all changes.  Even death itself can't defeat God.  His greatest defeat becomes His eternal victory.  All through town the whispers are heard: is it true what they are saying?  I saw him, I saw him!  But it can't be - dead men don't rise again!  But I saw him - I spoke with him.  I held his hands, looked into his eyes, and ate a meal with him.  Me too!  I saw him!   I would never have believed it but I saw him!

2,000 years on, the resurrection of Jesus stands as evidence that nothing will hold back the purposes of God. Every one of us will pass away, empires political and philosophical will rise and fall, but God and His gospel will remain.

God remains at work, On the throne, Eternity in his hands, furious love in his heart.

In a world full of empty claims and broken promises, I will stake my life on the one who the bible tells us will return and be called "faithful and true".  I will stake my life on the victorious hero.  I will stake my life on Jesus Christ.

Bump, baby and the voice of God

We have a bit of a story to tell.  When I think of it, we've got a long - even life-long - story of God's goodness and faithfulness, of looking back and seeing the fingerprints of the Father on our lives, shaping, directing and calling.

But this particular piece of the puzzle is an especially exciting one.  We thought we'd share it for a few reasons.  For those who share a relationship with God similar to ours, you may find it encouraging as you follow the voice of God in your life.  For those who are more distant from or skeptical about God, Christianity and matters spiritual, you may find it gives you cause to pause for thought, and reason to linger on the question: might there be some truth behind this "Jesus" after all?  Aside from anything else, for those who know us, and despite it all, retain some affection for us, you may simply enjoy hearing our news and celebrating with us.

We've been married for two months short of five years now.  I personally remain a great fan of marriage, and am daily more convinced that by the grace of God (or a glitch in the matrix) I have married well above my station. I am every day amazed, entranced and delighted by my breathtakingly beautiful wife, who also happens to be my best friend (sorry, lads) and my most perfect team-mate as we tackle all of life's peaks and troughs together.

Eventually, as I learned from an informative video in primary school, the time comes where "when a man and a woman love each other very much" they engage in certain leisure pursuits which result in a baby (with or without delivery by stork, depending on the squeamishness of your upbringing).  About 18 months ago, Roxy and I began to wonder if that time had come.

Big decision, right?

How do you know you're ready?  Do you ever?

We both know and love Jesus, so we thought we'd ask him.  It wasn't so much "when you wish upon a star", squeezing our eyes shut and searching for a sign - more "God, you know how much of a moron I am... What do you think?"

We went about our business, thinking, praying, wondering.

What followed was an extraordinary series of events, which we took to be undeniable evidence of God leading and guiding us, reassuring us that he was with us, and that he had our lives and our plans in his hands.

Some days after we had that conversation about now possibly being "the time", I found a note on my iPad.  It was a note I had made the previous January when Roxy and I had taken some time to reflect on the preceding year, and pray about the year to come.  We had forgotten that at that time we had felt that in one year, we may start "not trying not to" have kids.  One year later was now.

That was reassuring, the idea that our current plans were in line with what we had foreseen a year ago.  But, being a lawyer and needing as much evidence as possible, I continued to ask God to lead clearly. He did.

He answered in subtle ways - feelings and nudges, impressions and a weight of peace.

Then he started to get even clearer.

We had talked about names, and had two in mind, a boy's name and a girl's name (disclaimer: the names currently in mind may not be the same ones, but we've checked that with the almighty and he's cool with it).  I was working a couple of weeks in Aberdeen.  Roxy got on the train to see me, and the plan was to make a final decision that weekend. Two people sat next to her, and through a bizarre series of events (including walking in on tipsy fellow passenger on the Scotrail bog...) they all got talking, and as seems to be Roxy's gift, they went deep pretty fast.  They had a profound conversation and felt the presence of God moving.  The lady sitting with Roxy  then revealed she had a daughter with the same name as we'd talked about.  The guy across the table commented that he had the boy's name.

So far, so coincidental, right?

A few days later we were getting a taxi home after going to a gig with my family.  I'm genuinely open to the possibility that our taxi driver was an angel.  Hear me out. Remember how Paul said many have entertained angels without knowing it?  Well there is a chance that Gabriel, Michael or one of the others took on the form of a foul-mouthed Glaswegian taxi driver that night.  Without prompting, as soon as we sat down, he launched into a spectacular series of observations on life, love, and his two bemused passengers.  Without us saying a word (we didn't have the chance) he went through all of the reasons we should have kids now, without waiting for employment or financial security and without reservation as to the possible toll on our relationship. He said the most profound things, and addressed every remaining objection in my mind.  I was shell-shocked.  We got to our street, paid the fare, and he waved us off with the semi-biblical exhortation: "you're a lovely couple, now go forth and multiply - and practice tonight!"

The next day I was speaking at the evening service at church. It was a great evening where God was really moving, and at the end of my sermon a friend of ours (who had only become a Christian a few months earlier) saw a picture - like a vision from God - over me.  She was confused because what she saw was so odd.  She decided to ask Roxy why she was seeing such bizarre things in her mind's eye.  Roxy's response was to burst out laughing.  Our friend had seen a vision of an embryo - a baby being given to us as a blessing.  Things were becoming undeniable.

A week or two later I was again due to speak on Sunday, this time at the morning service.  I felt a tug to go and pray with a particular guy in church just before the service.  He felt God talking to him in that moment, and started telling me what he felt God was saying.  As we finished praying, he then said there was something else.  "I don't usually do this... But I see kids in the future for you, and pretty soon".  In all the circumstances of the last couple of weeks, I can't say I was shocked.

A month or so later, one of the other churches in the city was using our building for a leadership training session, and our pastor suggested we piggy back along and see what we could learn.  We had lunch with the guy leading the session, and God started speaking to him.  This was the first time we'd ever met, and indeed the first time anyone we knew had ever met him.  He told us what he thought God was saying... And what do you know?  It was all about us having kids.

By this point I started to suspect the Good Lord was trying to say something to us.

I won't go into detail (!) but we obeyed the voice of God.

But, as so many people have found out through tears and disappointment, biology doesn't always play ball when it comes to our plans and timings.  A year went by.  Nothing.  Now, I know many people have struggled to conceive for far longer so we weren't feeling sorry for ourselves.  But, at the same time... God did speak, didn't he?  I mean, if THAT wasn't God's voice, I couldn't ever be sure of hearing his voice. It had been so clear.  We kept praying, trusting, knowing what we'd heard from Him, and knowing that he always always does what he promises.

Into that place of tested faith and slightly strained hope, God spoke again.  This time, one of my closest friends, who knew a little bit of the background, felt God speaking to him.  He felt God saying he was pleased with us.  He felt God saying that he definitely was going to do what he promised, and not to worry.  And he felt God wanted to remind us that his timing was perfect.  And the best part... The part that I always laugh to remember... The part that reminds me that, far from the stuffy religious images of a blond-highlighted guy in a white dressing-gown holding a lamb, Jesus is in fact (in the holiest sense) a total lad.  God said, with a cosmic wink, that he'd told us to start early just because he "wanted us to have a bit of fun".  For so many reasons, I love Jesus.

And timing?

God waited until Roxy had a permanent job with the right to maternity pay.  God waited until I had taken the leap to leave my job and take a cut in pay and security to go and do something else, because he knew I would have struggled to make that decision with the weight of the responsibility of fatherhood, and would have ended up staying in a job that wasn't right for me.  God waited until our hearts were right, and our marriage was ready.

And, as if to remind us that he always will be and always has been on our side, doing everything - even dying on a cross - out of love for us... we found out on Easter weekend that we're pregnant.

God has said so many more things to us about our future, about our family, and about our baby - things that, like Mary at the start of the gospel story, we are treasuring in our hearts.  There is much more to come.  But we will always remember this particular season of our lives for the lessons God taught us, for the gracious way in which he allowed us to hear his voice so clearly, and most of all, for the blessing of the bump in my beautiful wife's belly.

The thing that sets Jesus apart from every other great historical, philosophical or religious leader is that he's still alive.  He speaks.  He cares.  He loves.  And we know it now, more than ever.

No matter what your story is, and no matter whether you are living right now with blessedness, brokenness, or (like most of us) a very human mixture of the two, Jesus cares about and loves you as much as he does Roxy and I - and let me tell you, he loves us an absolute shed load.  He longs to speak into your life as much as he has spoken into ours.  He longs to lead you closer to him, and onwards into a greater and more expansive vision of your future than you could ever dream up yourself.

All he asks is: "trust me".

We'd recommend you do.