I decided long ago that God was not the most ‘powerful’ thing in the universe. He much more resembles a barefoot Galilean prophet speaking in up-country dialect, followed by tax-gatherers, fishermen and prostitutes, who becomes a nuisance and ends up (very properly) by being crucified while the guards dice for his clothes – more to pass the time than because the garments are worth anything. It is not because God is powerful that I worship him; if he is powerful it is in some dimension that I don’t know anything about, which we can agree (if you like) to call eternity…

No, the moment when I love God is at the moment when the Galilean prophet was watching his followers melt away and suspected that Simon Peter the fisherman would soon be off too, back to his nets. ‘Wilt thou also go away?’ he asks Simon; but mercifully Simon is too stupid to see the point of the question, or to take his chance to get out. ‘Lord, to whom should we go? Thou hast the word of eternal life.’ That’s it, the obscure, futile shaky thing, as feeble as a baby in a stable, that’s what I worship.

J Ormerod Greenwood, 1973