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This photo was taken of me with my wife and two of a number of grand-children. I am wearing the ceremonial headscarf (known as a "shamagh") of the Royal Jordanian army - known as the "Arab Legion" at the time an uncle served with them as Commander 3rd brigade.

The grandchild on the left side, Fabian, is Palestinian by birth, and came to live in Australia in 1990 aged just over one.

The one on the right is Clancy, much younger, who is a home-grown Ozzie. Between Clancy and me is my wife, Pat, often referred to on-line as "Mrs" :)

There are many ways in which it could be said that my life has been one of failure.

In actual fact, it is probably solely through the grace of Almighty God that it isn't.

Born (in 1935) and reared in a military family until my father's retirement in about 1949, I travelled in 1936 from Northern Ireland (where my father's regiment was garrisoned for 2 years in the midst of the "troubles" which still go on) to Arabia, and was holidaying with my parents in the Channel islands at the time the war broke out in 1939, catching literally the last steamer back to the UK from St.Malo. We returned to Arabia till 1940 when father was recalled to active military service, then living with mother alone in Cape Town, Grahamstown, and the Hogsback Mountains in South Africa (while the war was on), returning to the UK and watching the European Victory Parade in the streets of London in 1945. For some six months near the end of the war, mother was seriously ill, and I stayed with a school friend's family during that time.

I was farmed out with another school friend's parents in south London for a couple of years while dad commanded a prisoner-of-war camp on the English east coast - from mid 1945, through that bitter winter (1946?) where much of England was under many feet of snow.

I was then placed in a boarding school for another three years while he moved with the Army to command the last (and high-risk) prison camp to close in the UK, located in Suffolk. This camp had a very large garrison of soldiers, because the inmates were high security Nazis, perhaps even including Rudolph Hess, because nobody knew where he was interned.

Then following my parents' (who by now were divorced) decision for a military career for me, I spent a year training and qualifying as a pilot in the Royal Air Force after my two-year-long failure (1951-53) to qualify at my parents' #1 preference - as a Naval officer.

Due to the political decisions of post-war Britain, having qualified as an Air Force pilot in early 1955, I was removed from flying (it was too expensive for taxpayers to keep trained pilots in the air) and like my colleagues I was expected to volunteer for active duty if my country needed it <grinz>

So really, a split family, a sort of "stolen generation" to coin a phrase - though much less so than my older sister who saw no family from age 9 to age 19 first because of my father's army posting to Aden, then the war - and my being left to myself and my peers to be raised, it is small wonder that my attitude towards life became that of greedy self-gratification because of realising I was being exploited by the "system", and like others, had an ongoing hope not to be found out in my anti-social behaviour.

Actually, the word "exploit" - like that other one "stress" - was not ever used in every-day language in those days. We just got on with what had to be done in life.

I believe that is where God's grace stepped in, although I was not to understand what that is for many more years, 1987 probably being a good anchor for that.

Greedy self-gratification usually includes dishonesty and lying to cover for it. In my case that is a very good description.

God I did not know. I knew of God's existence. I had been reared by an agnostic mother and a nominally Church of England school system. I then progressed into a nominally Church of England military system, being "demobilised" into a nominally Church of England society.

The "God is dead" preaching by clergymen was yet to be widely publicised. So, my contemporaries and I would have agreed that there was "a god", but because we had only heard the few bits of the bible that were rotated around the establishment church's calendar year, we knew nothing about Him, nor had been encouraged to find anything out, by churchmen, parents, teachers or peers.

In 1965 my first wife and 5 year-old son and I emigrated from Wales to Australia to start a new life. I worked as a communications technician and moved from job to job, working in South Australia and Western Australia.

I obtained a draughtsman's qualifications by training on-the-job; one problem being that at age 30 with a family, although Australian bureaucracy in the UK had told me my credentials were acceptable, 14 thousand miles later I found that they were not.

I worked as a base grade technician in broadcasting, progressing through the ranks to senior and chief classifications, and eventually found design work which took me into industrial control systems and instrumentation.

From 1977 to 1980 I worked as a (foreign) alien civilian for the U.S.A.F. at an outback communications station in Australia, acting as a crew chief on an occasional basis.

1980 brought me back to the city and I took up a series of contract and consulting situations in design, commissioning and troubleshooting of industrial control systems, and writing handbooks, and at the age of 51 became involved in computer aided design (CAD), something unheard of for a guy of that age. For some seven years I wrote for Australia's #1 CAD monthly, "Multi-CAD Magazine".

My (new) wife, having been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue (Immune Dysfunction) Syndrome, a considerable amount of my time was taken up with pursuing what little material was available about this illness, and I was co-opted as secretary of the South Australian support group for 3 years during 1989-1993. At this time I worked casually from home, adding PC support to CAD support - apart from 6 months overseas (in Sweden) during 1990 - but eventually I retired around 1997.

Going back a bit in time, in 1966 I met two very genuine guys selling religion at the door. I enjoyed their company for months and believed what they told me because I had an unexplainable spiritual encounter - I received an answer to prayer (which I had never even considered previously), asking God if He was was real, and I actually heard a voice saying "Yes, I am". I interpreted this to mean "the message you are hearing from these guys is true". Wrong.

About 1974 I became disillusioned with this belief system and was disowned by them in 1978. As breadwinner it was necessary to move to get alternative employment, as there was an acute shortage of work in my field at that time. Because my family abandoned me, refusing to move after I obtained accommodation, my personal domestic situation fell apart due to loneliness.

Then followed a period during which I successfully destroyed the personal lives of several ladies until someone I got to know at Christmas 1986 (now my wife) persuaded me to listen to a tape about Christianity - a tape which both pointed out errors in my previous thinking, and also that while I had turned my back on the god of my (and their) imagination, I had never met the biblical one. Many things fell into place at that time.

I then tried to find a congregation who were as committed in their acceptance of God's word as my previous association, and that took me until about 1993; those I found also accepted the fact that unhealed sickness doesn't necessarily mean you are lacking in faith.

I had discovered to my distress that too many well-meaning Christians I tried to worship with had swallowed what I later was able to identify as the charismatic/prosperity gospel where you have the audacity to tell God what you want done - something which conflicts with what the Bible actually says.

I believe that the important things I now realise are that if you genuinely seek God, He will help you, giving you the ability to take the steps you need to in order to follow Him honestly, without making excuses.

I am convinced He had his finger on me all that time, though, and why He allowed me the free reign He did I still do not understand. But He did, perhaps to allow me to share this sort of thing with others, often much younger than me.

I have no doubt that He exists. He is sovereign in His kingdom, and He will re-establish it here on earth in a very literal sense at a time of His choosing. I am convinced that He will eventually cut off access from the world to Him, shortly before the 'Second Coming' of Jesus, as is predicted in prophesy, and I am very, very glad to have heard and accepted Him before that happens.

I believe that while He forgives our genuine repentance from stuff He had identified as being unsuitable for us to do, in reality He expects us to stay away from that stuff, and use our experience to warn others, remembering always that He in His wisdom offers each of us - particularly the person to whom we are speaking - the freedom to accept or reject His word, without us beating them over the head with His truth. That only makes enemies. After all, He offered us that freedom of choice, didn't He?

In company with two others in a vocal trio, I often participate in singing a message of encouragement in institutional homes for the aged. The concluding lines of this modern oratorio from which we sing highlights, go like this:

"I'll meet you here at one table of friends
We'll meet at last at one table of friends
Where there once were many, let there now be one,
And let the Royal blood begin to flow.

And I exchange the betrayer's kiss...
And I exchange my denying lips...
For a mouth filled with praise
And a heart filled with love."

Murray Wylie
"The Jerusalem Passion" © 1987