Sometimes you meet a saint. Well that’s what happened to me the other day. I was asked to see a “little old lady” but she was so much more than that. She was in hospital and was going to have a biopsy but wanted to see me before she went for it.

When I saw her, I immediately felt there was something special about her.

She was obviously a person of faith and had her well-thumbed Bible on her table. “I’m a Christian,” she said, “and have believed in God all of my adult life.

"He has been good to me and blessed me. I have a husband and two wonderful children and lots of friends praying for me. The doctors think it is cancer and so do I but God has it all under control and I am in his hands.”

It was very moving to hear her say these words and know that she truly believed them. Sometimes, however, with some Christian believers, it is all so detached from their current situation.

It is all a bit triumphalist and victorious - which sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable. All a bit “pie in the sky when you die” without a recognition of the present reality. Not so with this saint. Faith and reality were hand in hand.

“I can’t say I don’t get down about it sometime,” she said, “but that’s only human. I don’t know what the future holds and I get a bit worried.

But I still know I am in God’s hands.” All of this reminded me of the Psalms in the Bible. They are full of songs of praise but also poems when life is tough and we are at the end of our tether. All of human life is there.

And in their higgledy- piggledy arrangement you will find “God’s praise will be continually in my mouth” very close to “Why have you forsaken me Lord?”

And so we read together the beautiful poetry of Psalm 139. “Lord you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

And with tears rolling down her cheeks we prayed. A true saint in the Christian life.