THERE was the question - right alongside one of my previous columns: "Do you have a story to tell?" The editor was inviting people with interesting stories to share them through the Banffie.

A COUPLE visited an orphanage, where they were planning to adopt a child. They met with the boy they hoped would become part of their family and told him in glowing terms about the many things they could give him.

WE all have them - unanswered questions about life, the universe and everything.

HAPPY New Year to all readers. I wonder whether you recognise the message: "Do you want to save the changes made?"

ONE of the birthday gifts I received some time ago is 'Planet Narnia' - a book which claims that the underlying coherence of the famous Narnia tales by C.S. Lewis comes from astronomy.

I HAVE been reading a rather remarkable book recently.

IT was one of these meetings where people were invited to come forward to seek prayer about particular problems.

ACCORDING to a verse in the Bible, we human beings look on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16,7).

IT was a chance encounter and it made me think.

DURING the month of September, many churches are participating in a campaign under the title of 'Back to Church Sunday'.

THERE is a text in the Bible that says: "Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth" (1 John 3,18).

YOU see the "withheld" sign on the phone (if you have Caller Display), but it might be somebody important, so you'd better answer it – only to be met with: "Congratulations, you have won..." – which is further than it gets before I replace it.

HE caught my eye among the 4,000 people gathered in the great tent at Keswick.

CHRISTIAN singer Garth Hewitt once said to a journalist: "My role is that of creating doubt in the mind of the ardent unbeliever".

THIS story concerns a train journey.

THE priest and the Levite may have been in a great hurry; to stop for the sake of the injured traveller might well have delayed them in their urgent business.

THE famous Helen Keller was only nineteen months old when she contracted an illness that left her blind and deaf.

IF only it would! That was the feeling my wife and I had one Monday many years ago as we might have been seen trying to throw a boomerang.

IT SEEMS that we live on a coast of many colours. Within a few miles, we have Whitehills, Redwell, Blackpots and Greenbanks (not to mention Golden Knowes Road). It's a colourful part of the country.

IN MAY 1927 Charles Augustus Lindbergh achieved worldwide fame when he made the first non-stop solo transatlantic flight: 33½ hours after leaving New York, he landed in Paris.

YOU'RE supposed to give a very serious and perhaps religious answer to such questions. "If you were stranded on a desert island and could have just one book, what would it be?"

THE apostle Paul wrote: "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs" (Ephesians 4,29).

ISN’T it nice of the powers-that-be to publish information in the press about where speed cameras are to be operating?

IT IS said that the older you get, the more quickly time flies!

IT'S one of the fascinating things of nature: the homing pigeon.

ISN'T it interesting that we celebrate Christmas at the darkest time of the year and also that Christmas is followed so soon by the start of a new year.

ONCE upon a time there was a kindly man who was generous to his family and upright in his dealings with other people. But he didn't believe in all this Christmas stuff about God coming to earth.

OVER the next few weeks many of us will receive invitations to special events, whether concerts, services or parties.

"PROBABLY?" That's the word. It's from an advertising slogan on London's bendy-buses, which its organisers hope they may be able to roll out across the country — if they can attract sufficient financial support.

ONE of the great things about the Bible is that whatever part you are studying at any time seems to be the most wonderful part of it.

IF there's one passage of Scripture which is more relevant to this particular time than any other, it may be Paul's words to his young lieutenant, Timothy.

ROBERT went late-night shopping in a discount store, where he was the only customer in the shop.

IT'S one of the sayings of Jesus. He had been asked which is the most important of all commandments we have been given.

NOW that the Olympics have come to an end, we can get back to our proper concentration on the good old game of soccer again!

"LIFE consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth". So wrote the renowned Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, whose death was reported recently.

I'VE never actually met the lady, though I know her missionary colleague. Judy has given most of her life to missionary work with a small tribe in Brazil.

IT must have seemed a good idea at the time. Responsible people, after all, want to warn children about the dangers of drugs and do everything in their power to prevent them starting on that downward slope.

THOMAS Edison is reputed to have been the world's most prolific inventor; he took out over 1,000 patents, and this story concerns the most famous of all his inventions.

THEY have been called "the numbers of hope" – not because they may be lucky numbers or anything of that kind, but because they give the Scriptural reference to some words of enormous hope and good news.

OVER the years I have managed to amass quite a few books. It will hardly surprise anyone to know that there are quite a few about Jesus!

IT must be one of the questions most frequently asked, and people assess one another by their answers to that question.

WHAT do you think about these wrestling bouts that are sometimes seen on television?

CONVERSATION supposedly at the famous Western Wall in Jerusalem, often featured in news broadcasts from Israel:

THERE is a story told about a soldier who was standing to attention in an isolated corner of a Russian palace. When questioned about why he was stationed there, he could only say that he was following his captain's orders.

INCREDIBLE as it may seem, it's Easter time already! The lunar calendar has meant a particularly early celebration (first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox).

I WAS supposed to be there at 4 o'clock, but it was past four and I had somehow taken a wrong turning; not to put too fine a point on it, I was lost.

"AN announcement beamed around the world" – begins one of the books I received as a Christmas present – "that the first draft of the human genome, our own instruction book, has been assembled."

A NATIVE American elder was trying to describe the inner struggles that he sometimes felt going on inside him.

ONE of the most remarkable statements of faith in the Bible comes from a man called Habakkuk.

HAPPY New Year! And, before we begin to think about putting the decorations away for another year, let me refer to one family where the mother and daughter, one day in early December, had gone up to the loft to get the Christmas decorations down.

I WOULD like to cast this article in the form of a prayer, in the hope that you would share in offering it as a Christmas prayer to the Lord God, in the remembrance that Christmas is more than the mince pies, crackers and parties. It's more than a midwinter festival. It's more than 'the holiday season'.

CAN you remember when you learned to write your name?

GENERATIONS of children have learned the simple words of the song, "Jesus loves me".

IT'S one of these things that slip off the tongue so easily; I've even seen it described as the "mantra of social commentators" – the reference to people of all faiths and none.

IT'S an old joke. "Do you wake up grumpy in the morning?" "No, I just let him wake up by himself".

APPARENTLY there is such an organisation as the Procrastinators’ Club. But – who would ever get round to joining it?

MAYBE it was a somewhat surreal sight. There I was, sitting on the seat outside the church (on one of the few days this summer when it was possible to do so without being blown away, soaked with rain or frozen stiff!) awaiting the arrival of a former minister who wanted to re-visit the church.

DON'T you think it epitomises the self-centredness and narcissism of our time – that awful song, 'My Way'?

THE trouble with road-signs is that they are planned and erected by people who know the area!

ACCORDING to a report published last week, more than a third of us can't read a basic road map.

HAVE you heard the one about the notice in the "Jobs Vacant" section of a magazine, which said: "Wanted: man to work on nuclear fissionable isotope molecular reactive counters and three-phase cyclotronic uranium photosynthesisers. No experience necessary"!

THE minister was young and new to the particular church where he was called to minister. Every Sunday he noticed that there was one regular attender who always seemed to have a miserable look on his face; sometimes he would find the man’s stony face quite off-putting.

“THE Opiate of the people”

THE STORY is told of an Australian who came home one day to find that his house had collapsed; nothing remained but a pile of dust and rubble.

HOW'S your Punctuation? It can be so important. One of the peculiarities of our time is the misuse of the apostrophe; so often we see one where there ought not to be one, or we see one in the wrong place.

SATURDAY sees the start of Christian Aid Week, a week of much fund-raising on behalf of the poor of the world.

IT HAPPENS nearly every Sunday. People are filing out of church and someone has to come back against the stream to return a hymn-book they had inadvertently taken away.

"1/8 W + (D-d) 3/8 xTQ MxNA" THE worst day of the year! ... According to one widely-reported theory, it was January 24th.

IF ever there was a time when giving up might've seemed justifiable, it would be August 1799, when my subject, William Wilberforce, aged 40, had for 10 years been campaigning for the abolition of the British slave trade.

"Like a cork in a basin" - THE proverbial visitor from Mars, it's suggested in a book used recently by our congregational reading group, might well be surprised "that prayer and worship had not vanished off the face of the earth".

THE story of Daniel in the lions' den must be one of the best-known Bible stories, but how was it that Daniel ended up in that den?

THE date was February 14, the year 269, and St Valentine was to be executed that day. Some legends say that, in a time when Rome was trying to eradicate the new faith, he had refused to give up Christianity.

MUCH encouragement can be found in the stories of some famous people who, early in their lives, were reckoned to be pretty uninspired or uninspiring people, but of whom that reckoning was proved wrong.

"BE PREPARED." It's good advice – not just for Scouts and Guides, who celebrate their centenary this year. "Be Prepared" is good advice for all of us in all sorts of ways.

NEW diary – new calendar – new year resolutions. Have you made any? Maybe it's to go on a diet, take more exercise, be more patient with your children (or parents).

BEST wishes to all readers of the Banffshire Journal for a very happy Christmas.

I SUPPOSE it must happen to dog lovers too. There was I, who have never owned a dog, stepping right into it and having to get home and get the hose out (my good shoes too!).

ACCORDING to a successful advertising slogan for BT, "It's good to talk". Obviously it's very good for BT if we do plenty of talking – but it's a very true saying – it IS good to talk.

MARGE was sitting on a plane bound for Cleveland. They were preparing for take-off and as she settled into her seat, she noticed a strange phenomenon.

IN A pluralistic world like this, one of our great needs is tolerance. We need more of the spirit of Voltaire, who said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.

STATING the obvious is sometimes no bad thing. Just the other day I came upon some interesting words from Norman Vincent Peale, addressed to preachers.

Among these visits, of course, were several to Scotland, accompanied by his renowned musical associate, Ira D. Sankey.

ACCORDING to an old African proverb, whenever you point the finger at someone else, there are three fingers pointing back at yourself. Yet, it’s so much easier to see the faults of others than to see your own.

CHRISTIANITY is a demanding religion. It is no easy option for people who merely want a religious veneer to make them look better – not the real Christianity of Jesus, that is.

IN THE same year in which I was born in Edinburgh, there was born in Tel Aviv a baby who was named Itzhak.

A SCHOOL geography class studied the Seven Wonders of the World, and afterwards were asked what they considered to be the seven most wonderful things in the world.

THE Dangers of Prosperity: It’s a striking statement, especially from one who was well acquainted with the puzzles and enigmas of the strange 20th century.

FREEDOM, as an old Scottish poem tells us, is a noble thing. So much of history has been the story of different peoples’ struggle for freedom.

TALK about media hype! Few films have attracted the advance publicity that the Da Vinci Code has attracted, with one trailer even describing it as a film that threatens the very survival of Christianity!

WHO ever heard of Eddie Braben?