I had a conversation yesterday during which a friend suggested that practising the Christian life was like practising the guitar; when you first start it hurts, but as you keep practising it comes more and more easily. This has inspired me to pick up my guitar again and pound away at those bar chords, which still sound awful. The difficulty is keeping going through all the awfulness until something beautiful emerges. My fingers hurt A LOT. George Harrison taught himself to play guitar and apparently used to practice until his fingers bled. Tonight I was, somewhat ambitiously, trying to play 'Waterloo Sunset' by my second favourite band in the world, The Kinks. (I couldn't). It's a really, really beautiful song and to be honest they probably shouldn't print the chords in books so incompetents like me can mangle it. But it reminded me of an interview I once saw on TV with Ray Davies, lead singer of the band, who wrote the song. He apparently...