A water-bearer in India had two large pots, both hung on the ends of a pole which he carried across his neck.  One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water.  At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.  For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half potfuls of water to his house.

There have been times in my life when I have cried out to God in desperation.  I remember so well the desperate prayers I prayed for a baby called Craig.  I had been asked to visit a woman in the Brompton Hospital.  She was in her thirties, had three children and was pregnant with a fourth.  Her partner had left her and she was on her own.  Her third child, who was a child with Down’s syndrome, had a hole in his heart which had been operated on.  The operation had not been a success and, not unnaturally, the medical staff wanted to turn the machines off.  Three times they asked her if they could turn the machines off and let the baby die.  She said no, as she wanted to try one last thing.  She wanted someone to pray for him.

Recently we were with Jackie Pullinger in Hong Kong.  One of the people we saw there was Ah Yin.  It is many years since I first met him.  He became a drug addict as a teenager.  His father was an addict.  He was brought up in the Walled City.  He joined a gang at the age of eleven.  They ate, stole and fought together.  They took heroin together.  At the age of fourteen he got caught doing a robbery and spent his first time in detention.

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) lived and died to see society transformed.  In 1964 he became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end social segregation and discrimination.

An American lawyer and evangelist, Charles Finney, was speaking in New York in the 1830s.  A great many lawyers came to hear him.  One night, the Chief Justice was sitting way up in the gallery.  As he listened to Finney proclaiming the gospel he became convinced it was true. 

On the very few occasions I have tried to play golf I have found it most frustrating.  Sir Winston Churchill said, ‘Golf is an ineffectual attempt to direct an uncontrollable sphere into an inaccessible hole with instruments ill-adapted to the purpose!’

The God of Surprises is the title of a book, written by Gerard Hughes in 1972.  It is a very apt title.  God so often surprises us. 

‘Jesus Christ continues to overshadow the ages.  He remains, to say the least of it, unique.  If God is like Jesus, God is worth believing in.  This great enigmatic figure continues to astonish.  Surely he was the Son of God’, wrote the journalist, Anthony Burgess, reviewing the book with the simple title ‘Jesus’.   

You could have heard a pin drop.  It was mesmerising.  We were spellbound.  An eighty-five year old man, almost totally blind, got up to speak to fifteen hundred people of all ages on our church holiday.  He had no notes, of course, because he could no longer read.  He gave two talks, each of them an hour long.