I know there are plans afoot to give third world children free computers, but what I remember from the more remote parts of the world that I have visited, large numbers of the children would be asking for no more than a 'school pen', to enable them to learn to write. Fortunately, radio is now such cheap technology that it is possible that even in such remote places they might have had access to the BBC World Service, and be able to hear me talking. I used to find that idea humbling (and still do), as well as an awesome responsibility, when sitting in my priviledged state in front of my computer.

[Qur'an, from the chapter called Thunder vv. 8-14]

God knows what every female bears, and the wombs' shrinking and swelling; everything with Him has its measure - the Knower of the unseen and the visible, the All-great, the All-exalted.

Alike of you is he who conceals his saying, and he who proclaims it, he who hides himself in the night, and he who walks boldly out by day; he has attendant angels, before him and behind him, watching over him by God's command. God changes not what is in a people, until they change what is in themselves. Whensoever God wills people to suffer evil, there is no turning it back; they have no one who can protect them from Him.

It is He who shows you the lightning, for fear and hope, and produces the heavy clouds; the thunder proclaims His praise, as do the angels, in awe of Him. He looses the thunderbolts, and with them strikes whom He wills; yet they dispute about God, who is mighty in power. To Him is the call of truth; and those upon whom they call, apart from Him, answer them nothing.

I don't use a pen as much as I used to. Nowadays I spend more time typing what I write into a computer, so much so that my handwriting has become very untidy from lack of practice, as all I write with a pen are occasional scribbled notes and my signature. The computer may be quicker, and much more convenient to correct and edit, but it basically does the same job as a pen, it's just the electronics and mechanics that make it faster and more efficient, like the typewriter was before it.

We write down symbols to represent the sounds of speech, and combine them into groups that represent the words and phrases of our various languages, and so we can record ideas in a form that will outlive the one who thought of them, and pass information from one person to another across great divides of space and time. All that is needed is for the one who reads to be able to understand the script and language of the one who writes.

Qur'an often uses the example of a Pen writing on a Tablet to describe the process of creation, with the sentences that are written being the signs of God for us to read, and if all the trees of the world were pens, and all the seas and seven seas after them ink, they would still be insufficient to record the words of God's creation. The first verses of the Qur'an to be revealed contain the lines "Read, and your Lord is most Generous, Who taught by the Pen, taught man what he knew not". The pen combines small signs together to make a greater sense. It also places things in sequence - that is, like us, it functions in time.

For most of us time is inevitably a very one way experience. I look back and I can remember all sorts of things, what happened last week or last year, and even things that happened before I was born. I can remember what happened to Mary Queen of Scots, at least, I remember what was passed on through the ages to reach me at school. I am positively stuffed with information about what happened up to this moment, but when I look into the future I can't even be sure what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow.

God is not limited by time, however, and His knowledge encompasses all of creation, what is before us and what comes after. Sometimes while we stumble in the dark of ignorance, feeling for the path, He will give us a moment of guidance, like a flash of lightning briefly allowing us to see the way ahead, yet also terrifyingly revealing the hazards of the journey and the awful fate of those who go astray.

But the guidance lasts only too briefly, and from it we have to learn and then remember. For the All-powerful and All-knowing Creator does not force us in any direction, but lets us make our own decisions. That freedom of choice, the chance to make mistakes, is what makes the situation scary, and is also of course what makes the journey so exhilarating for the traveller.