On Sunday evening I stood next to Walesby Old Church and watched one of the most perfect sunsets that I have ever seen.

The light all day had been brilliantly clear, almost translucent. The Laburnam in the garden was the brightest yellow I have ever seen it, the Lilac the mauvest of mauves. Now at exactly 8.30 in the evening the sun, a huge orange globe sunk directly into the horizon, something one sees very rarely around here. The whole sky gradually changed into a bluish grey colour.

It was intensely quiet and I walked slowly home over the Wolds waiting for the first stars to appear, the nearest street lamps five miles away there is no light pollution.

Today, Monday, we heard that Osama bin Laden had met his violent end.

In the readings this week Nicodemus seems to speak to all of us doubters. For him the practical and the seen is reality:

Nicodemus said “How can a grown man be born again? Can he go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”

Jesus replies that we have to be born of the spirit.

Unless we can plumb the spirit within us we will never make progress.