with the Rev KEVIN LOGAN, of Christ Church, Accrington

ONE of my childhood prayers ran: "Dear God, please let me be knocked down by a double-decker bus as I leave church after Communion."

My young mind recoiled from roasting in hell fire, so I figured I needed to be as holy as possible when I faced my Maker.

I was about as good at being good as I was at doing algebra. While I could never figure what 'X' equalled, my lacklustre inner life was a mass of big Xs, and I knew exactly what they equalled.

A second, unspoken and illogical prayer was that there'd turn out to be, just as with Father Christmas, no Father God. What I liked in life, especially after puberty, this killjoy God didn't.

How on earth did such a weird child become, of all things, a vicar?

Well, God cancelled the double-decker and instead knocked me down with the shock news that he'd already sent his Son to die for my sins.

Heaven, as a result, was his free love gift. I accepted.

He told me in his bible that death was gateway to real life. Earth was merely the preparation for the best that was yet to be, a truth especially precious in our family right now.

Knowing God, I saw where I'd come from, why I was here and where I was going.

Right and wrong had a foundation. Law and order also. He is my joy, my peace, my logic to make sense of a mad world.

Today, the thought of no God is worse than hell itself.