After more than sixty years in ministry and counselling, the author reflects on suffering, faith, and the healing power of forgiveness.
After more than six decades in ministry, pastoral care, and counselling, Graeme Cann has spent much of his life listening to the struggles and questions people carry through challenges and tragedies. Alongside his wife Julia, he has walked with individuals and families facing trauma, loss, and uncertainty, both in church communities and through counselling and missionary work. These experiences eventually found their way into his writing.
In Walking in the Light at Midnight, Graeme and Julia reflect on the reality of suffering and the choices people face. Drawing on their own experiences and the stories of people they have known, the book explores questions of faith, forgiveness, and how people move forward when life does not unfold the way they hoped.
“Whilst we have had no control of what has befallen us, we do have a choice about how we respond.”
Graeme Cann
You have spent more than six decades in ministry, counselling, and pastoral work. Can you tell us a little about your journey and how it eventually led you to become an author?
I became a pastor 66 years ago and soon discovered that my passion was pastoral care. After two years Julia and I married and we began a ten-year ministry with the Leprosy Mission. During that time I travelled all over Australia and preached in hundreds of churches of all denominations. I found that pastors also needed someone to unload to and, despite my youthfulness, they shared deeply with me. Julia likewise, back in our local church, developed a caring ministry until, at the age of 29, she was stuck down with three strokes over a period of three months. With four young children this necessitated that I be at home much more, so our time in the Leprosy Mission came to an end. We became youth pastors in our local church and, although we loved our church family, we were disturbed when we looked at our city to see how small an impact the churches as a whole were making on the wider community.
Eventually, with several other couples we founded and launched the Elkanah Christian Community in a beautiful mountain area about 100 kms from our home church. Julia and I lived there with our family for 16 years and, amongst many ministries, commenced a residential counselling ministry, where broken people came for help. We also, with some other counsellors, helped in the foundation of the Christian Counsellors Association of Victoria, which became the Australian Christian Counsellors Association. In1990 we returned to pastoring churches and did so till we were 78. Since then we have been writing and mentoring and sometimes speaking in churches.
Your latest book, Walking in the Light at Midnight, explores suffering, faith, and hope during life’s darkest moments. What inspired you and your wife Julia to write this book together?
We had experienced dark times ourselves and travelled with many others in their valleys of suffering, and we believed that we might have something helpful to share. Almost all the stories we tell in this book came from people in our church. The book is really a collaboration of friends.
This is your fifth book published with Tellwell. What has your experience been like working with the Tellwell team, and how has that partnership supported your publishing journey?
Working with Tellwell on five books was a great experience. Their patience with a novice writer was wonderful and the skill and experience they brought to the task was second to none. The fact that, in a country so far away from the publishers, they were contactable at any time here in Australia was fabulous
The book addresses difficult questions many people wrestle with, such as why suffering exists and where God is during times of hardship. What conversations or experiences in your ministry shaped the message of this book the most?
Many of the people we counselled and cared for both at Elkanah and in the churches we pastored were victims of childhood sexual abuse and other types of trauma, and legitimately asked the question, “Why did God let this happen to me?” Being able to tell our own stories and the stories of our friends was a way of modelling a way through this valid question.
You have published several books with Tellwell, including Encounter, Confronting Conflict, That They All May Be One, and Now That Is The Church. How has your writing evolved across these books, and what themes continue to guide your work?
Encounter was a devotional book providing a reading and reflection for each day of the year. That They May All be One was a devotional commentary on the Gospel of John. Now That Is the Church reflects my concern that the church across the world was in danger of becoming an organisation rather than the organism it was created to be. Instead of the “Body of Christ” with us as body parts, it is in danger of just becoming another institution or simply just a religion. Before discovering Tellwell, I self-published two other books. When the Tiger Roars is a novel that explores the relationship between fear and anger. The Guilt Busters another novel, focussing on the pathway to healing for abuse survivors.
In Walking in the Light at Midnight, you emphasize that suffering is something everyone eventually encounters. What do you most hope readers take away from the book when they find themselves in their own “midnight”?
We have attempted to share that, whilst we have had no control of what has befallen us, we do have a choice about how we respond. Whilst initial anger or resentment is natural, there comes a time when we have to understand that anger, resentment, and blame will ultimately destroy us.
God has given the world the greatest gift of all: forgiveness. He modelled it to us Himself and He commanded others to “forgive others as He has forgiven us.” Forgiveness is the key to emotional freedom and enables us to choose healthy pathways into the future.
To find out more and get the books, visit Graeme’s website.
