I'VE had my feet up recently with time to think about one of God's greatest gifts. Pain!

'Thank you,' you're supposed to say for presents, but sometimes you struggle, don't you? Then you find yourself thanking God for remembering to create the narcotic plants for those marvellous dulling pills.

Before I left school I'd had five arms in plaster. All mine. I continued the mad goalkeeping existence and more anatomical details swelled my medical records into my 30s.

I once jumped out of a plane and seconds before landing amnesia wiped out the parachute instructor never mind what he'd taught us. Pain reminded me to be still until help arrived.

Since then, I've had cancer, two legs sawn off and replaced with new knobbly hips and now the first new hip's playing up again, all payment for an entertaining life that I wouldn't change for a second.

So, with leg rampant, and through sometimes gritted teeth, I say, Thank you, Lord, for sharp divine messages to take it easy. How kind of you to set limits before I cripple myself beyond repair.' However, as far as pain unto death is concerned, I can't pretend to understand, nor that awful suffering that often seems without reason.

But I've an inkling that God understands it all. After all, didn't we make him the chief sufferer of the universe what with our wilfulness and that terrible cross of Calvary?

Oh yes, he understands and can help.