A young man sitting in church one day made a startling discovery.

He was a medical student, only nineteen years old. The sermon was boring.

Instead of listening to it, his attention was drawn to the lantern swaying back and forward. He started timing its swings, using his own pulse as a clock. And he made a discovery, a discovery that changed his life, and changed our world. He dropped out of medicine and began studying maths and physics. His name was Galileo.

Albert Einstein called him the father of modern science. No doubt hundreds of people had sat in that church whereas they simply saw an old lantern swaying back and forth, Galileo thought, "Aha!" There’s more to this than meets the eye.

It is those "Ah Ha" moments that change our world and our lives.

Shortly we celebrate the birth of Robert Burns. His life was not easy and yet he embraced the world and the world embraced him. He wrote of struggle and pain. His sympathies were for the poor and oppressed. He hated all kinds of oppression and discrimination.

Those who witnessed his birth on that cold and blustery 25th January 1759 had little notion that they were witnessing the birth of a genius. His life was brief, entering this world at Alloway and departing from it in the town of Dumfries a mere 37 years later. His poetry has inspired millions and continues to do so. What was his secret… maybe to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. Like Gallileo to see the "Ah Ah" in life whereas most of us just see the routine. If ever his words are relevant they are today…. A time of division, of inflammatory politics, of sabre rattling politicians and the ever present threat of terrorism.

May his words be our prayer:

Then let us pray that come it may,

(As come it will for a' that,)

That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,

Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.

For a' that, an' a' that,

It's coming yet for a' that,

That Man to Man, the world o'er,

Shall brothers be for a' that.