Dad's death had also prompted other stirrings; One of the reasons I had been attracted to a police career was the possibility of retiring at a relatively young age, in my case 49 - still young enough to travel - not to mention eat, drink and be merry! However dad died young which made me question my long term plans - maybe I should retire now and see the world before it was too late?
My wife and I loved sailing, this coupled with the fact that the Tasmanian Police were recruiting from UK forces sparked an idea - why not take a while to sail out to Aus - get a new life and see the world in the process? It was indeed one of my better ideas but soon looked unlikely as we compared our income with even the most modest yacht capable of the trip.
To cut a long story short we were soon encouraged to contemplate building our own boat which we began in 1973. So picture the scene if you will; both of us had full time jobs, every spare moment was spent building and in the middle I start wanting to prove God doesn't exist. It doesn't make a lot of sense but that's what happened. My search began in the eastern religions which confirmed my initial premise, god was an invention of man; men made up the rules of how to please him so they could gain some comfort from the knowledge that they had pleased him. It's amazing what bizarre things this god or god's require of us.I also began to realise that phrases like all roads lead to god don't make any sense at all as the only thing these gods had in common was the name. I finally came to Christianity and was instantly struck by the fact that, although brought up in a so called Christian country, my idea of what Christians believed was actually way off beam.
I acquired a copy of the New Testament in paper back and written in modern English together with some other books to read around the subject and I began to become troubled by this Jesus. It was clear from all reasonable evidence that I couldn't dismiss his existence, there was far too much documentation to prove otherwise - I was amazed at the historicity of Jesus and his recorded words. I then discovered that I couldn't write him off as being just a really good teacher, that doesn't wash. You don't tell your followers that you are the Messiah if you are a good teacher you are either a basket case or an inveterate liar and neither seemed to fit. Unfortunately this only left me with the option that he was who he said he was, An option that I certainly had not expected and, despite the evidence I was seeing, an option which I was very reluctant to acknowledge. There seemed to be a battle raging and that alone made me realise that there was more going on here than some kind of intellectual ascent to a dogma or creed. Finally at around 2am during a quiet night shift I decided that Jesus was real God was real and I had to either continue fighting or surrender. I chose the latter and instantly was filled with the most inexpressible sense of peace and joy. I guess I had been "born again" although I knew nothing of that terminology. Some weeks later my wife, who had been on a parrallel exploration, came to the same decision based on the evidence surrounding the resurrection of Jesus.
Just in case you were wondering what happened to the boat we were building - in the fullness of time it was finished and we left England in 1981 to work for a few years with a Christian mission in the Middle East before returning to the UK with a baby daughter. It has since spent some years in the South Pacific and is currently owned by a Church in Norway in youth work
