Tears on the London Underground.

It was one those unusual evenings after alighting at London Waterloo Station when I thought a walk across the River Thames on a traffic-free footbridge would be more fulfiling than boarding a London Underground, or Tube train, direct from the mainline terminus.

An old route has recently been reopened. After being closed off for several years due to the presence of a huge redevelopment project, a footbridge now crosses the busy York Road into South Bank, where two newly-built skyscrapers reaching heavenward stand side by side, with a pedestrian concourse in between, giving easy access to Jubilee Park which fronts the river, itself dominated by the huge bicycle wheel-like London Eye, erected twenty years earlier to commemorate the start of the new Millennium.

London Eye across Jubilee Gardens.

The presence of these sky-high buildings, along with the noise of busy traffic behind, made me feel very small and insignificant. And indeed, whilst at the otherwise deserted concourse, a mother and two young children were making their way in the opposite direction, towards Waterloo. The mother was frustrated with her daughter, looking to be six or seven years old. Although she was telling her off for something, her foreign tongue prevented me from understanding what she was saying to her. The sole parent was also wheeling a pushchair, within a two-year-old boy was strapped, his cheeks run with tears as he was screaming his protest. By looking back after they had passed, the reason for his tears became obvious. Poor Mum, thinking only for the best for her son, attempted to cover his head with a woolly balaclava, only to be violently whipped off immediately whilst the child cried even louder.

There was something about the whole scene which hit me hard. The two huge and intimidating skyscrapers, with us in between, the roar of nearby traffic. And the sight of a screaming two-year-old whose wails contrasted so feebly with the traffic noise. All in all, a picture of minuteness in a huge, uncaring world. I felt my emotions slide into a deep depression.

Halfway across the gardens, I was approached from behind by an Afro-Carribean, in his twenties, who asked me where he can find Eye-Park. A very suspicious question indeed. Whether he was referring to the gardens we were at, or Hyde Park (quite a distance from where we were) or some other location I had never heard of before, I just turned around and, I hope, with an aggressive expression, I said I don't know. He beat a rapid retreat. Being very aware of sly pickpocketing gangs using this very approach to avert attention, I was very wary, checking that I hadn't lost anything.

I approached Embankment Station on the other side of the river, and after passing easily through the barriers, it was only a few moments later, whilst sitting at the platform, when tears were rolling down my own face. The young child back at that concourse brought out all mental images of my beloved, first her present absence, then her illness, her hair loss during chemotherapy, now her daily trips to Guildford for radiotherapy, in addition to our own daughters growing up elsewhere...I felt no shame as my tears flowed, only to be interrupted by the rumbling of the train slowing down as it enters the tubular station.

As the train doors opened and those who wanted to alight had all done so, there was this gent with a holding case just standing there on the platform edge, outside the waiting train, blocking my entry just as the doors were about to shut. I muttered:
For heaven's sake, get in there!
He stepped in with me immediately following. He then launched into a tirade. How dare that I hurried him to board the train! I had a choice. I could either:
A. With my clenched fist, force him to swallow his own teeth, or
B. Ignore his tirade and move away along the carriage.

With the train packed with many standing, including both of us, I thought B was the better option. After all, a scene was what I just did not want, being on board a crowded train, and then the police, etc, etc.

At last, I alighted at the street at Russell Square. Directly opposite the station is a Pret A'Manger Coffee bar. I was hungry so this was quite a welcoming sight. Yes, as soon as I had settled down with a cappuccino and croissant, another Afro-Caribbean or one of Asian origin, looking to be in his late twenties or early thirties, approached my table from behind, asking for small change. Despite my anger, I just told him to go away without swearing or being too rude. I was amazed when he went around all the other tables, including one occupied by two women, with the same request. No one gave him anything. And rightly so. He looked healthy, well-fed, and clothed reasonably well. Not only that, but outside in the street, I saw him prattling around without any sign of distress, asking passersby for money. Homeless? He looked to be a fake.

Gosh, what a journey! Four separate incidences within just a couple of miles and feeling down in the pits. But where was my final destination? It was at Senate House of the University of London, where I was to attend a lecture delivered by Prof Michael Scott, who is also a BBC TV presenter on classical archaeology, on the same par as BBC presenters Brian Cox or Simon Reeve. Tonight's theme was about the ancient city of Herculaneum, destroyed by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in AD 79.

I felt all my negative emotions melt away as I entered the Woburn Suite fifteen minutes before the start of the lecture, feeling far more relaxed and content. As I occupied a seat on the second row from the front, I did notice that the majority of attendees making up the audience were senior citizens, very much unlike the audience of Oxford students who attended a debate two weeks earlier at Trinity College. These were not only predominantly senior citizens but they had an upper-middle-class look about them. Yet the topic of Herculaneum was always something of interest, going way back to 1973 while backpacking Italy, the train I was in flew through the station of Portici Ercolano whilst on its way to Salerno from Central Naples, to alight at Pompei to visit the excavations.

I felt a sense of anticipation as I watched the professor talking to one important-looking elderly chap, dressed in suit and tie, before commencing on his talk. During his lecture, there was one item of discussion which, to me stood out from the rest of the life and events of Herculaneum, and that was to do with the effects of the eruption. People attempting to hide from the pyroclastic blast were annihilated instantly. This including the boiling of the blood and other body fluids to complete dryness in 560-degree Celcius heat. But what I found most striking of all was the brain of one individual vitrified into a glass fragment as the hot blast hit him. Scott spent quite a bit of his lecture on this alone, explaining that the early archaeologists thought that the glass fragment, which was found inside the victim's skull, were pieces of jewellery until laboratory testing proved otherwise.

This glass fragment is actually a vitrified human brain.

Another view of the same glass fragment found inside a skull.

A human brain vitrified into a piece of glass? Isn't glass made from sand mixed with some silicone heated to a very high temperature? In other words, glass is sand which as been through intense heat. Yet he's speaking about a human brain, made of organic material consisting of billions of nerve cells - turning into a piece of glass!

I can't help but remember the Scriptures, that the first man, Adam, was created from the dust of the earth. After the Fall, God reminds our first parents that they were made from the ground, they are dust, and to the ground, they return (Genesis 3:19). How amazing then, that Science, Archaeology, and a secular Professor has all unwittingly endorsed the truth of Holy Scripture!

Following the lecture was question time. Unlike at Trinity College where the moderator decided whose question will be received, this time it was Scott himself who pointed at my raised hand. I then asked:
Sir, back in the eighties I had a copy of The National Geographic.* In it was an article about the find of an upturned hull of a boat found in one of the arches of Herculaneum. Archaeologists were very interested in the find, but with the interior concealed in mud, they were keen to discover how the Romans fared at sea. But the hull was scorched to charcoal and therefore very brittle to the touch. Has any more information about this boat come to light since the article was published?

Professor Scott looked flabbergasted as he tried to answer my question, then admitted his own unawareness of the boat. After the meeting officially closed the important-looking elderly chap dressed in his suit and tie then approached me in person.

He then went on to explain to me that yes, he is familiar with the boat, and it's now on display at the Pliny Museum, located on-site at Ercolano. Looking at his prominent breast identity badge, I could see that this fellow was Rob Fowler, chief Treasurer of the Herculaneum Society, which is responsible for annual escorted tours of the region, which he tells me that this year's trip is already fully booked up. Such visits allow visitors into parts of the excavations not open to the public. All members also receive literature, news and updates mainly on Herculaneum itself. Fortunately, he did not try to push any sales tat on me to join the club. Who knows, maybe I just don't look the posh type! Before I left, I shook hands with open-neck Professor Michael Scott himself, the TV celebrity, and thanking him on how well I have enjoyed the talk.

What a contrast of moods in just one evening. How I felt after seeing this mother and her two offspring, followed with my threefold reaction to different fellows at each situation has confirmed that unless I'm fully acquited by Jesus Christ and having his righteousness imputed into my account, there is absolutely no hope of Heaven after death. As such, believing in Once Saved Always Saved, or Eternal Security of the Believer is vitally crucial in my walk with God. Such reality of Biblical truth was as if forced upon me during the lecture. Here I was reminded of the awful, instantaneous deaths suffered by the people of Herculaneum and Pompei alike.

Were they greater sinners than I am today? By no means, according to Jesus himself. But unless I repent, I too will perish like they did (Luke 13:4) and unless I believe that he is, I too will perish in my sins (John 8:24.) To change my mind to believe that this Jesus of Nazareth is the risen Christ is the essence of repentance. But once having truely believed, my being becomes the home of the Holy Spirit and I forever become a son of God. That is wonderful news.

That's why I long for those who don't believe in Once Saved Always Saved to realise what a bad situation to be in. There are many such Christians, some I have known personally. Perhaps the idea of keeping the British stiff upper lip will prevent them from falling into sin. The trouble with that idea is that one can fall into sin just by harbouring a pleasant but unclean thought. Or to silently or under breath call someone an idiot without actually verbalising it. Really, how far into sin one sinks into before losing his salvation? No one can define where the line is, when crossed over, salvation is lost. But the Bible says that one who keeps the whole Law perfectly until he stumbles at just one point has already sinned, having broken the Law and is subject to judgement (James 2:10.) That's why God justifies the wicked or the ungodly through the imputed righteousness of Christ (Romans 4:5.) There is no other option.

Professor Michael Scott, whom I met personally.

Indeed, sin is still in me. John the Apostle agrees. In his first letter, he writes that anyone who says he is without sin is deceiving himself (1 John 1:8). Not surprising, as a human, I too suffer emotional turbulence - even as a believer in the risen Jesus Christ. And that had begun just by seeing a screaming two-year-old trying to survive in a big, noisy and apparently uncaring world. Yet, I did not sin when I saw the child. What has happened straight after, the emotional knock-on effect eventually led to sin.

I thank God for God's mercy - and not end up like any of those poor souls in Herculaneum.

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*National Geographic, vol 165, No.5. May 1984.

A Cretin Halts Eurostar!

I grew up in a family where my late father seemed to have had an averse against public transport. Therefore I became used to being transported in his family car, the Ford Popular, a particular make and model, as the name implied, popular around the late fifties and into the sixties. However, despite how he might have felt towards using public transport, I do remember very clearly his use of the London Underground with just me to accompany him, before passing his driving test and acquiring his first ever car. As a small child, it was quite daunting to sit inside this apparently huge, man-made subterranean cavern and the sight of the train emerging from the tunnel at one end of the cavern. Because of the enclosed space, the noise of rolling wheels on the tracks was amplified as it echoed around the confines of the station space.

The Ford Popular, Dad's first ever car.

However, those were the glory days of my youth, when we lived in Pimlico, a Westminster residential district with the River Thames itself forming the southern border, with the east by Vauxhall Bridge Road, the west by the Grosvenor Canal, and the north with Belgravia by Victoria Station. During my childhood days, the Victoria Line with Pimlico Tube Station, now very close to where we used to live, did not exist, since the Victoria Line opened in sections between 1968 and 1972, with Pimlico Station itself being the last to open, which by then we were long settled in Bracknell. Therefore I have always tried to figure out which of the Tube lines Dad took me in when he had to travel across London to do business.

And so indeed, when Dad used the tube, I often accompanied him. But not so with Mum, because she never used the Underground, always preferring those red double-decker buses which plied the streets of the city. Although she had never said so, I suspect it could have been a feeling of claustrophobia, especially when the train stops in between stations and we are stuck in a tight tunnel beneath the surface and out of reach from sunlight. I guess those were the glory days of Empire, or at least, the end-days of Empire, while across the Channel, a six-nation European Economic Community was in its fledgeling stage with the rising of General De Gaulle of France making sure that Britain will have no part of EEC membership.

Therefore what a privilege it was to be old and eligible enough to vote for the UK to join the EEC, or the European Common Market, in 1973, when I was a mere twenty-year-old. It was as if I was sticking my two fingers at the former French president. But more important, to be in the Community drew closer ties with Italy, my ancestral home country where the rest of our relatives still live. And I rejoiced when the result came out the next day. We were in.

Although my father continued to drive his own car until old age coupled with cancer finally overtook him, just like Mum never taking to the Underground, I never took to the steering wheel, although in 1978, on one occasion, I did drive a three-wheel Reliant right into London on the M4 motorway, nevertheless, on a daily basis, the nearest in guiding a motor vehicle along Britain's roads was on a motorcycle. It was only a small bike in the motorcycling world, not more than 90cc, but it gave me independence and pleasure until one afternoon, a car in front decided to brake suddenly, and to avoid a rear collision, I swerved sharply, throwing me off the two-wheeler and left lying on the road next to the bike. Eventually, someone called the ambulance and was taken to the nearest hospital, where I spent the next few days bedded down in one of the wards.

As a child, I was overawed by the cavernous tube station. 

Having heard so many stories of permanent disabilities and fatalities caused by motorbike accidents, it was after leaving the hospital when I decided to leave the motorcycle locked permanently away at the garage and buy a pushbike. I believe it was a wise move. This was because not only riding a bicycle was much cheaper than any motor vehicle, but pedalling offered fitness as well, to the extent that triathlon training and competition began to dominate the 1980s, into the nineties.

Therefore the train became the main form of long-distance transportation. Although the much-maligned British Rail was plagued with strikes, go-slows and other forms of industrial unrest, nevertheless whenever normal service resumed, I always found our trains to be fast, efficient and punctual. For example, the Bracknell-London Waterloo service took just forty minutes to complete during the early 1970s, stopping only at Staines. Now, after privatisation during the nineties, our Southwest Trains stops at eight additional stations before arriving at Waterloo, and another stop is due to be added due to a housing development. Indeed, our present services are a lot slower than they used to be, at least on our line.

But I think the development of HS1, or the Eurostar, was the great leap in Anglo/French rail development, with the construction of the Channel Tunnel, a tube 31.35-mile, 50.45 km in length passing through a chalk bed under the English Channel. It's actually longer than the 30-mile route from our home town into London but it takes just twenty minutes for the Eurostar train to pass under the sea from Folkstone to Calais.

Therefore it came of no surprise over our excited anticipation in 2016 as Alex was able to climb out of her wheelchair, fold and to push it under the luggage rack as we boarded at London St Pancras for Paris. As the train accelerated through East London and Kent before entering the tunnel, I thought of the vast improvement in travel since the 1960s when Dad drove his car from our home to Paris. That is, without any direct motorways back then, this involved up to two days driving, including a late-evening ferry from Dover to Calais (with a long wait before embarkation), an overnight sleep in the car just outside Calais, then a day's driving into Paris. That was in 1966, after stripping off my school uniform for the Summer and when our family's tight budget caused us to eschew a hotel for the night.

By comparison, the Eurostar train took just 136 minutes to pull into Paris Gare de Nord from London St Pancras. We repeated the journey exactly a year later as part of our wedding anniversary celebration, and then again only a couple of weeks ago, when we boarded the international train for the third journey, this time for the 120-minute dash to Brussels. All three outbound journeys were fast, non-stop. For the return journeys, the 2016 return trip from Paris was also non-stop, the 2017 return stopped additionally at Ebbsfleet International, while the return from Brussels stopped at Lille. 

Yes, it can be argued that some magic has gone from international travel. At least with the good old boat-train which dominated my travels during the early seventies. From London Victoria, there was this hassle of alighting at Folkstone, passing through Passport Control to board the ferry to Boulogne, then board their train for Rome. With further onboard Passport checks at Modane, the whole journey took more than 24 hours to get to Rome from London overall, but I found it to be very thrilling. Especially on board the ferry which rolled over a rough sea, causing a rush of sea-spray to give us all on deck an unexpected soaking! (For the record, many of us stood on the outdoor decking to avoid the stench of vomit flooding the floor of the bar and restaurant). No wonder that after the crossing, I felt that I was really in a foreign country. 

Those were the days, my friend - the good old 1970s. Who thought they would ever end?

Therefore it came as a shock to the system to read about this deranged individual who successfully halted all Eurostar departures out of St Pancras and also delayed the arrivals from Paris and Brussels, and wrecking the plans of thousands of passengers. He was protesting about the delay of Brexit from the original March 29th exit until the 12th April, with a strong possibility of further delays in leaving the EU until a deal can be passed through Parliament. 

What he did was to spend the whole of the early hours of Saturday morning on the roof of the tunnel at Barnsbury, which takes the Eurostar track underground beneath the Overground railway tracks, therefore bypassing all the stations on that line. This action endangered his life, therefore the need to shut down all overhead power lines.

This guy, who is in his forties, does tarnish the reputation of Brexiteers. I can even go as far as to say that not all Brexiteers are lunatics of course, but every lunatic had voted Leave. I can bet every single penny that he is one of many who would love to see the Eurotunnel dynamited and sealed forever, so never again would a train pass from England to France and back under the ocean. His protest was a cry for British sovereignty - or secretly, something else.

Like as I mentioned two weeks earlier, chances are that he had never travelled on Eurostar, neither has he any intention to do so. If I was able to pierce through his tough-minded Euroscepticism, I would most likely find fear lurking in the inner depths of his heart. Not the fear of losing the chance of Britain being free from the shackles of Brussels, but fear of being in the tunnel itself. As aforementioned, he could imagine being stuck below the sea due to a signal failure, a fire, a mechanical or electrical breakdown, or seawater rushing into the tunnel, drowning everyone. Alternatively, he could have feelings of deep envy of these middle-class scum who can afford to pay for the journey and enjoy the experience, himself having to scrimp and scrape from his low-paid job, or even from benefits.

Many Brexiteers would love to see this permanently closed.

These are the thoughts and feelings most likely lurking under his stiff upper lip and patriotic love for his country. He gets a level of comfort by believing that we who voted to remain in the EU are spineless wimps who promote Project Fear, and are too pessimistic to consider England's bright and glorious future as an independent sovereign nation without the need for God, yet advancing in evolution. As former Daily Mail journalist and ardent Brexiteer, Katie Hopkins, who once publicly announced that all Remainers and foreign immigrants are but monkeys, hinting backwardness on Darwin's evolutionary scale - the exact thoughts of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi henchmen who favoured eugenics and ushered in the Holocaust in their attempt to obey Francis Galton's recommendation to spur natural selection on the eradication of the unfit in their survival for life.

Was that protester acting in a godly manner by halting all Eurostar departures? I think not. But I do know quite a number of Christians who hold the same opinions and share the same desires as this lone protester. The only difference is that they attend church instead of protesting on the roof of a railway tunnel. Other than that, they are arm-in-arm in support for the divorce.

Achieving Better Self-Esteem.

What on Earth is going on? Day after day the Media, through the Press, via television and radio, stories of knife crime seems to be exploding across England, with the majority taking place in and around the London area. Quite a phenomenon really, when considering those monthly train trips to London from my home town of Bracknell around fifty years ago, in the 1960s while I was in my mid-teens, and barely out of school. Mum had never worried too much about her elder son travelling thirty miles on his own during the weekend, for with knife crime being totally non-existent, she had little to be concerned about. The point of this is whether Mums at present are far more concerned about letting their teenage offspring out alone in cities such as London - the present culture of helicopter parenting.

Those monthly leisure trips into London became weekly trips to college, located in Shoreditch in the area of east London, then known for its furniture trade. It was where I could have bought a bottle of shellac, wood stain or even lacquer for French polishing or other forms of wood finishing, items which would have been extremely difficult to get elsewhere in the UK. And it was also the location for the London College of Furniture, where I had to attend during those day-releases which every firm employing school-leavers were obliged under law to give.

London College of Furniture - attended 1968-1970.

If I might add here, throughout the life of the family-owned business manufacturing furniture for the connoisseur's choice, just as every apprentice was given a day release to travel to London to attend college, a set mode of transportation was followed. The student boarded a train from Bracknell to London Waterloo, then from there took an LT bus to Shoreditch. Every apprentice up to my time did the same. But when my turn came, I had to be different! A quick check on the London Underground map showed a quicker and more efficient way to get to the college - Waterloo Station to Old Street underground station on the Northern Line, changing at Kennington. A little later, that was modified to changing at Elephant & Castle, on the Bakerloo Line, thus making the journey a little shorter.

This new mode of transportation caused quite a stir throughout the company I worked for. My foreman's tongue couldn't stop wagging, astonished on how someone like little me, a teenager with no school qualifications, actually launched what could be called a mini-revolution, just because I took a look at a map of the London Underground. As a result, thereafter, every apprentice student working at that firm took the same Underground route which I had first "discovered" - in the years that followed.

But whatever I did in London, I never felt threatened or in any form of danger. After college, I met my first girlfriend, who lived at Wimbledon. Therefore, trips to London became a twice-a-week schedule into the seventies - Wednesdays and Saturdays - and had never encountered any form of threat during those days, and that despite the rise of the National Front causing racially-motivated street scuffles against immigrants of ethnic diversity.

The National Front, formed in 1967 with the amalgamation of the League of Empire Loyalists, the Racial Preservation Society and the Greater Britain Movement, such attitudes going back to the 1950s, when immigration from faraway lands such as Jamaica was at its peak, followed by those from Pakistan. Whether you may agree with me here or not, it does seem that such right-wing extremists have always suffered a problem of self-identification or self-worth. And I could be wrong here, but I have gotten the impression that many of those members are from working-class families. I once had a good friend working on the shop floor of a precision engineering factory throughout the mid-seventies who was a member of the National Front. 

I was impressed with his commitment to his cause, and he asked me whether I was interested in joining his movement. I said that I would consider after I have read their manifesto. This positive attitude towards his ideas was not because I was patriotic, but because of my naivety in being a young, newly-converted Christian believer. Back then, to believe in Christ was synonymous with capitalism, while socialism was, so I thought, arose from the pits of darkness. And I mistakenly believed that supporting the National Front was honouring to God! However, I insisted on reading their credo before making any move.

It was after reading their leaflet when I realised that the whole movement was militaristic, racist and anti-immigrant from which I had a change of mind, and declined his offer to join. Unfortunately, from that moment his friendship towards me cooled, and he left the firm a short time after.

I suppose my former friend needed something of a cause to be committed to, a group of people with whom he has a sense of identity, the feeling of belonging with a bedrock of imperialism and of a sense of racial and national superiority. And to this day, I wonder whether this nationwide feeling of tribalism is the real motive for Brexit, as the Queen suggested on Christmas Day, the feeling of anti-immigrant xenophobia, the underlying threat that these "foreigners" could offer something superior to what many of our indigenous Brits could offer.

At the same time, the quest for status has been suggested by the media for many youths of all races to carry knives. And although the recent killing of Manchester student Yousef Makki was done by two middle-class boys who attend prestigious schools, this was a rare exception rather than the rule. As I see it, those who carry a knife are from those who failed at school or were expelled at an early age, and rather than engage in useful employment, often group themselves in gang rivalry engaged in the illegal drug trade.

What a shame it is that in our culture, an individual's self-worth is determined by others on his level of education. The brighter he is, the greater the respect he gets. And I have seen this both inside as well as outside the church. And that was so vividly demonstrated in the nineties on at least two occasions.

I was exhorted to deliver a preach on one evening service during the mid-nineties. I had never done this before, so I felt nervous, draining one glass of water after another throughout the talk. On the front row, right in front of me sat a patriotic Englishman who was either reading something or doodling. After the service, I actually heard him boasting to others around that he didn't listen to a single word I had said! Driven by a strong sense of inferior complex, this one-time kitchen porter always acted as if he was nationally and culturally superior to me, because of my "backwards" Italian origins and heritage. A strong advocate of the British stiff upper lip, he never fulfilled his dream of marrying and raising a family. Just three years my junior, he remains single to this day.

On another occasion, which occurred in 1997, after arriving home after a Round-the-World backpacking trip, I stood at the front to give my testimony of the ten-week journey. Within the talk, I mention a possible link between what was displayed and sold in American shops, especially in Santa Barbara, to the future "strong delusion" of 2 Thessalonians 2:11. Looking back at it now, I realise that I might have been way off track, but that didn't stop someone in the audience to say:

What is that fool talking about? What does he know? He's just a window cleaner!

What a contrast all that is compared with the universal respect shown to any graduate who stands at the front. Regardless whether he takes the Bible as literal history or not, within the very same church, he receives reverential respect, simply because of his high level of education.

Putting it all together, it comes as no surprise that many who failed at school carry a knife as a status symbol. Gripped and driven by a deep sense of inferiority, such a person who instantly retribute anyone who dares pose a threat to his ego. Therefore lives are eternally lost by means of a stabbing, which is now growing at a frightening rate in this country.

And I, myself was from time to time felt a sense of inferiority complex throughout the seventies and eighties. That is until the nineties when it was dominated by world travel, which was a psychological therapy and an emotional panacea which contributed well to my sense of self-worth. 

But it is the Bible itself which offers a more permanent therapy for feelings of lacking self-worth. It is found in Psalm 139, which contains these verses:

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.

When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139:13-16.

We are created and each one of us is unique to God! That is a far cry from believing in Theistic or Darwinian Evolution, which in themselves promote a sense of lacking self-worth.

Everyone born is unique and was knit together in the womb by God himself. As such, God loves each one of us so dearly and has a yearning heart for all to come to him through faith in Christ. As the Scripture says, God commands all men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30) and that he is patient, not willing that any should perish, but all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). Maybe that's why, in verse 19, he writes, 

If only you would slay the wicked, O God!

If only...But God doesn't. He is not willing that any should perish but to come to repentance instead, and to receive life. This could be the reason why many Old Testament saints were puzzled over the longevity of the unbeliever persisting in his sin. God is patient, waiting for such to change their minds about him, and to trust him for his promise of a future Messiah.

But equally important, God has formed each and every one of us secretly in the mother's womb. Every one of us is unique to him, and therefore objects of his love. So sad it is that the awareness of sin, combined with guilt, the feelings of rejection and of condemnation, making the soul crying out for love and acceptance, to be respected as one of the in-group, along with the lie that he is nothing more than an animal, along with another lie that he's nothing more than a random collection of atoms in a lucky chance of evolution by natural selection.

I know - the omniscience of God. How could God pay so much attention to the unborn if he also knows that this person will never repent throughout life? This is a mystery of God, him being infinite and ourselves finite. It can be heartbreaking to watch a newborn of unbelieving parents, lying asleep in his cot and wondering whether he will ever be drawn close to God's heart. I'll be honest here, but this is one of God's infinite questions to which I cannot provide an adequate answer.

Perhaps the closest I could come was once suggested by one of our church leaders during his sermon. He visualised an open door, over which was read, WHOEVER WILL, LET HIM COME THROUGH. But when the believer walks through the door, he turns to look back, to read another sign which says, CHOSEN BY GOD IN HIS SOVEREIGNTY.

I know, it might look rather naff, but it could be the closest suggestion made by a finite mind to the infinite mind of God.

However, the real cure for a lack of self-worth is to meditate on Scripture such as Psalm 139 with a believing heart. Reading the Bible and mixing it with faith produces a recipe which is so nourishing to the soul and spirit.