My great, great grandfather, Thomas Macindoe, lived in Glasgow, Scotland over 150 years ago. One day his flatmate showed him a photo of pretty girl. Thomas was impressed and kept teasing, asking to meet the girl. His friend said, ‘No. She’s mine’. And then….

One Sabbath morning my fellow lodger asked if I would go with him to the church he attended, and I had no objection as it was the Barony where Dr. Norman McLeod was minister. I went with him and, when near the church, he said he would show me that bonny lassie. He took me to the very seat she occupied with her mother and sisters. I partly walked home with the family and, when I had parted with them, was invited by the mother of the young lady aforementioned to visit with my friend. This I did, and the consequence was a courtship that ended in marriage’.

And the rest, as they say, is history – My History!

Thomas Macindoe and Ellen Paterson were married in the Barony Church in the mid-1860’s. They emigrated to Australia in 1884 with their large family of eight children, in the hope of finding a better climate for their eldest son, my great grandfather, Walter, who was threatened with consumption (TB).

Photographs, flatmates, teasing, church invites, courting, children, illness, opportunity, risk – the trivial and the dramatic – all seamlessly interwoven into the tapestry of life. As I contemplate all the ‘What ifs’ in this story, I am reminded that God is sovereign.

Today, he remains sovereign over all the trivialities and drama of our lives. Rest in him.