This Sunday we look at the story of David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17). As a shepherd boy David would have seemed singularly unqualified to take on a nine foot giant but unlikely experiences can have unexpected outcomes. I have spent the last week at a conference sitting at the back of a brightly lit lecture hall wearing sunglasses. I am an epileptic and too long an exposure to artificial lighting triggers a seizure. On the last evening one of the other delegates brought his own sunglasses and sat next to me as an act of solidarity. In a stroke he converted an uncomfortable experience into one that was fun. He was David with my epilepsy as Goliath. The psychologist Carl Rogers wrote the following: "I have found the very feeling that seems to me most private and most personal and hence most incomprehensible by others has turned out to be an expression for which there is resonance in many people. It had led me to believe that what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others"

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