What a difference a day makes

I would never say that someone won't be going to heaven. That's up to God not me (which is just as well because it would likely depend on what mood I was in and what my hormones were doing on that day).

However I do tend towards a Miss Superior attitude. I'm a Christian - my future is assured - but I don't really expect to see you there!

Today I went to see my great-aunt, Auntie Joan. I told her I didn't know that Uncle Horace had been in the Dambusters and she said that he wouldn't talk about it. He was recruited into the squadron just before they were married, and she didn't know until afterwards what it was he was doing.

Years later he was still having nightmares. Thirty, forty years later he would suddenly sit up in bed and shout, '2 o'clock!' When he was invited to a reunion in the 70s, he wouldn't go, couldn't face going.

I didn't know that they'd met in a church youth group either. I knew they'd been married in the church he was buried from but didn't realise that when she was 16 and he was 20, they started going out after the youth group. 'We used to go to church three times a Sunday then,' Auntie Joan said. 'We loved it.'

I've never known Uncle Horace go to church, except for weddings and funerals. I was learning a lot about him.

'Oh, yes,' Auntie Joan went on, 'on Sunday nights he used to say, "Let's have Songs of Praise on." We'd watch that and then he'd be happy. He was quite a religious man in his own way.'

There are Christians I know who would say, 'That doesn't make him a Christian; that doesn't guarantee him a place in heaven.' But I know where he is right now. And he's free from his nightmares.