with the Rev Kevin Logan, Vicar of Christ Church Accrington

IT haunted me through Christmas, pursued me into the New Year and caught me yet again yesterday drifting over Asda's shelves.

I'm just one in a million seduced by its beauty, so much so that I eventually bought it - my first single since Tommy Steele was top of the pops.

Mad World! - the Christmas No. 1 I've come to love and hate.

Gary Jules pours out the melody without performance. No frills. No sound effects. Nothing, save its notes, is needed.

The music I love, but, oh, those suicidal lyrics.

"All around me are familiar faces... worn out places, worn out faces, going nowhere, going nowhere . Hang my head I want to drown my sorrows no tomorrow. no tomorrow, no one knew me, look right through me. It's a very, very mad world."

That's the hopeless gist, yet it was the number one hit in a festive season famous for fun and hope and peace on earth.

Such irony produced the Bible's shortest verse, "Jesus wept". God offers us so much yet we take so little.

"Going nowhere?" Jesus has gone ahead to prepare a mansion with rooms for all who want him. "No tomorrow"? He promises an eternity of them. "No one knew me"? God knows every hair on our heads.

He loves us so much that he came in person to show us the way.

He's here now in his Spirit to hold our hand in cancer or crisis, if only we allow him.

Let him into life and the madness flees as he drowns our sorrows.