‘Hebrews 11.1–6 has kind of shaped my life and reflected how I see the Bible and my faith. It says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”.

‘I had this as a poster on the back of my door at university for a while and it’s always meant a lot to me. I’m quite a probing person. I was a journalist for many years and that was a job that was well-suited to my temperament. You ask a lot of questions and you are not satisfied with obvious answers. You try to get under the skin of a person, or a situation.

‘I have never been someone who is satisfied with quick and glib answers. I want to be certain about things. In a way that verse expresses something about how I approach faith.

‘I think that Christians are a bit prone to want everything to be clear and simple. Faith and life aren’t like that.

‘The whole Christian story makes sense to me personally and helps me to live my life and gives me a bigger perspective. It’s about setting my life in the context of eternity, within a story that takes in God, the world and me.

‘I don’t have to understand everything. I am happy to live with vast areas of uncertainty because the overall story makes sense to me.

‘These verses have the effect of placing me one remove from whatever rubbish is going on in my life. I had a very deeply traumatic divorce. One brother died of a genetic disease. The other is extremely ill. Things have happened that it pains me to look back on.

‘Have these things rocked my faith? No, I can’t say they have because “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”. It’s about perspective. It can be the difference between sanity and insanity, even though it doesn’t seem like a big thing.’

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