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From Dave Tomlinson,Ìýwriter and vicar at large:Ìý

Last week my wife Pat and I were in Switzerland where I gave some talks. As a treat, our hosts organised a trip to Montreux where Freddie Mercury recorded his last songs with Queen. Being a huge Freddie fan Pat was thrilled to visit the band’s reconstructed studio and get a picture with his famous statue on the banks of Lake Geneva.

It’s actually 30 years today since Freddie made his final public appearance. The tragedy for the many like Freddie who died of AIDS in the 80s and 90s – is how relatively soon the drugs became available that might have saved their lives. In the late 1990s I served as chaplain to a hospital specialising in HIV treatment where I took the funerals of many who, a few years later, may not have died.

Yet, this is just one of many unfair situations in life that I for one would love to reverse. To use a footballing metaphor, I wish there was a massive VAR system - a cosmic video referee who could reverse unjust decisions or outcomes in the world, award a red card to pain and suffering.

The tragic death of Caroline Flack at the weekend is a case in point. I never knew her and I don’t fully understand the circumstances that brought her to that sad place but I wept when I heard the news – partly for the loss of her precious life but also for all those other losses and agonising circumstances I’d dearly love to reverse.

However, while there is no grand video referee waiting to overturn the bad things that happen in our lives and in the world, I don’t believe that we are helpless. A parishioner with more reason than most to feel despair told me, ‘I can’t stop nasty things from happening, Dave, but that doesn’t stop me from doing good things instead!’

More than all the depressing stuff in the world, what impresses me most is the irrepressibility of the human spirit – the will to find silver linings, to resist despair, to keep on doing loving, generous things in the face of sorrow and adversity.Ìý