I had gone down for the launch of the Abbot’s book on the architectural history of the Abbey.

Vespers was passing me by and my mind wandered into the failures of our lives. Then a passage from Psalm 138 struck me: “The Lord is high yet He looks on the lowly. And the haughty he knows from afar.”

Our troubles or unfulfilled ambitions are brought into perspective by Him.

The view of earth from a lowly level is very different from an aeroplane. From above everything is flattened. But if God looks down all of us high and low are foreshortened, of the same height in His gaze.