Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

Few things in our world elicit such raw emotion as Christmas. For some, the sight of a red Salvation Army collection kettle or the hearing of an old Bing Crosby holiday standard is enough to make them burst into singing, "It's the most wonderful time of the year!" 

Rarely has anything so simple become so complicated. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, and I was wrapping up my week's vacation with a day of complete inactivity. (How that makes it different than just about any other day is anyone's guess.)

I’ll never forget the day I first asked Jesus to be my Savior. I was a wide-eyed, seven-year old kid attending a Vacation Bible School. I couldn’t wait to tell my mom about the decision I had made when I got home that afternoon. She rejoiced with me and commemorated the occasion by buying me a green, hard-cover Living Bible. On the front, inside cover, she carefully scribed in pen the date of my conversion so I would never forget it: “Saved – July 29, 1975.” It would be a date I could forever point to and say, “Yes, that was the day I gave my life to Christ.”

Batman and Bruce Wayne - The Incredible Hulk and Dr. Bruce Banner - and lately, Iron Man and Tony Stark. Two definitive sides of the same person. The one can do battle with the forces of evil and come out on top every time. The other, without the benefit of their superhuman powers, would be just another victim on the villain's path to world domination.