Jim and the Universe

A Story for Believers

This book grew out of a simple question: what happens when a fearful child encounters a way of seeing the world that is rooted in trust rather than anxiety?

The spiritual ideas explored in this book were inspired by a range of influences, including the Christian mystical tradition and the New Thought movement, as well as my own experience of watching how fear and faith shape everyday life.

Readers may recognise echoes of ideas sometimes described as “the law of attraction,” but it intentionally moves away from the idea that faith is a tool for control or personal gain. Jim’s misunderstandings — especially his early attempts to use faith to avoid responsibility or effort — are part of the story’s theology rather than mistakes in it. Instead, the novel explores faith as a lived relationship: something that matures, is misunderstood, fails, is corrected, and ultimately expresses itself through love, courage, and responsibility. Jim’s journey is not about learning how to control events, but about learning how to trust, how to listen, and how to act without fear.

Faith, as the novel presents it, is not passive optimism or magical thinking. It is cooperation, discernment, and growth, shaped by experience and correction.Suffering, loss, and death are not excluded from this worldview. They are integral to it. The presence of trust does not eliminate pain, but it does change how pain is held and how life continues beyond it.

I have deliberately used the word Universe rather than more doctrinal language, not to avoid faith, but to make space for readers from different backgrounds to engage with questions of meaning, trust, loss, and hope. Those with a Christian background may recognise familiar themes beneath the surface; others may find their own language for the same experiences.

This is a work of fiction. It does not offer a spiritual system, a set of promises, or a guarantee of outcomes. It is simply an invitation to consider what might change if we chose faith over fear in the ordinary moments of life.