I’ve arrived at that nostalgic phase of life, realising the number of years already gone are larger than those that lie ahead.

I reflect on big decisions that I have made and have few real regrets. If I could have my life again, I will still marry the same girl, still do the same jobs.

Hopefully I might make fewer mistakes, but I doubt it; I’d just make different ones.

But I also think of how things happen that are out of your own control.

For example, my father worked for ICI and was working in Fleetwood as a research chemist. ICI decided to move my father Scotland. So, I had my secondary schooling and university in Scotland.

I went to St. Andrews university where incidentally I lived in the same residence as did William and Kate – one of them could have been in my room.

Anyway, it was at university I met my wife, in the maths class. The thought came to me that had ICI not moved my father to Scotland, my wife and I would not have met, and our children would not exist. Things happen to us over which we have no control.

One of my grandchildren has been doing A Levels and she has worked really hard but did not quite get the grades she expected.

She’s realised that life does not work out exactly as you hoped or planned and that other events can change things.

The other big part of life that we do not have total control over is health issues.

My wife has been in hospital now for over three months and this has been a struggle. I have wondered where is God in all this and indeed went through a period when I thought God had left us and during that time I could feel quite alone.

But one of my favourite stories by Jesus is of a shepherd who had lost one of his hundred sheep. And rather than just settling for the 99 he had, he went searching for the lost one.

And that has been my experience; I may have lost God, but God never lost me, and he came looking for me. I discovered again, in the uncertainties of life, I have rediscovered that God is always there.