The readings this week are from the book of Samuel, a description of David’s trials and tribulations. On Monday he is supreme. I arrived too late for Mass in the Cathedral at Strasbourg and made do with a visit to the seminarian church.

Even an empty church is soothing. On Tuesday amid great rejoicing David “brought the arc of God up from Obed-Edom’s house to the Citadel of David.”

I could not get to the evening mass. I was speaking in the Council of Europe urging the case for Israel to stop creating settlements. Strange how two and a half thousand years later we are still in the same part of the world. Surely this is no accident. Here it really does seem that God has created the fault line of humankind. On Wednesday evening I could not get to mass either. I was speaking on the impact of migrants. And where are more being displaced now than anywhere else? In the Middle East: in Syria. The poetry in the revelation to David is beautiful:

I will provide a place for my people Israel; I will plant them there and they shall dwell in that place and never be disturbed again; nor shall the wicked continue to oppress them as they did.

I did hear Mass on Thursday. Nathan seems pretty happy with David. I love today’s reading about the lamp: “For there is nothing hidden but it must be disclosed.”

Up early for Mass on Friday, everything now goes pear-shaped for David. And we know why he conveniently gets rid of Uriah the Hittite. What exactly does the mustard seed parable mean? Is its growth dependent on our faith? In which case I fear with me it might stay small indeed.

I was back in the Cathedral in London on Saturday for 8am mass. The words of Nathan to David are all too depressing especially as the reader reads them out very – too – slowly. Does anyone dare talk to our leaders now in this way?

“Then Nathan said to David ‘You are the man. So now the sword will never be far from your house.’”

Later I was walking over the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds, a two and a half hour walk from station railhead to cottage. An extraordinary yellow light filtered down from the clouds, bathing the plain in a luminous shaft of white light. A track led down from a five-bar gate, down from the high point on which I stood, towards the light. The track was muddy. The gate closed and locked. I turned aside from the light and went on my way into the darkening valley in which a tiny distant dot of yellow light welcomed me home to tea.