My friend Da who lives across the road asked me, last night, to pray for a man who was in critical condition in a hospital in the UK. Scant were the details but pray I did. Alas, he passed away in the night, having given his life to save another's.

I have prayed before for God to spare the life of a person in similar circumstances, one just as desperate really, though in this case, someone much younger. Doctors were about to turn off the life support, the family had been readied for the worst. But she recovered remarkably and with her memory intact. The hospital was dumbfounded. There was no rational explanation.

I cannot know the ways that God answers prayer, nor how its fits in with his all-knowingness. If you know the end from the beginning, then the causes and effects of everything can be discerned in advance and with it, supreme clarity.

We stumble in the fog, but hold on to the light of  faith. In as much as some critics call belief a crutch, they are sorely wrong. It takes far more courage to believe, than not.

For now, at least, we see only, 'through a glass, darkly.'