Here’s the text for the 17 March 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

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Last Christmas I visited my family in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. My sister Brooke said: “Trey, my Christmas present for you this year is: we’re going on a pilgrimage together ­­– to the tattoo parlor.”

Brooke is a tattoo veteran: it was her fifth time getting inked. I, however, was a virgin: under-the-needle for my very first time – though I hear once you start, you can’t stop.

I almost got tattoed at uni. Over the course of one term, I came out as gay, had a beautifully-weird God-encounter, and ­– despite my parents’ protests­ – I swerved from reading medicine to reading theology. I wanted to celebrate all that ­– but I couldn’t figure out a tattoo that’d do the trick. I thought maybe a cross, and a man-breaking-free-from-chains, and a rainbow flag, and a bible verse.

But that all felt a bit much, so I didn’t go through with it. Not then nor during any of the other rites of passage over the next three decades: kissing a boy for the first time, getting ordained, getting married (not to the first boy I kissed), getting sober, moving to Britain, and on and on.

I turn fifty this year. And Brooke said, “it’s time for your tattoo, and we’re going together”.

She celebrated 12 years cancer-free by getting a lyric inked on her arm ­– “measure in love” ­ from the musical RENT.

I decided on three different words, now permanent on my wrist:

new every morning

It’s a mantra I started praying when I got sober. A clue that the best life is in the present moment. “One day at a time” we say in 12-step-recovery. New every morning, new every minute, new every single breath.

It’s also part of a Bible verse that reads: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. God’s mercies never come to an end: they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness, O God.”

That is a statement of trust … and especially radical because it’s in the biblical book of Lamentations, this long-list of personal suffering, global injustice, the break-down of integrity. Lamentations was inked 2600 years ago but still rings true today. Basically: Things are royally messed up, God, but new every morning is your love.

Given my personal tendency to mess up, I need that assurance. I wake up, I clean my teeth, I see my tattoo and I remember – not only that I am new every morning, but, more importantly, I believe, God’s love is. Permanent, eternal, tattooed onto my skin, into my heart. Inscribed forever into the life of every single thing.