Month: August 2019

Went to a brilliant service last Sunday, in a “local church for local people” (thank you League of Gentlemen for putting our town on the map), led by a local preacher. Still couldn’t stop my head rushing off on tangents though.
Five really good hymns, including “We cannot measure how you heal…” by John Bell and Graham Maule sung to the right tune (ye Banks and Braes), which is unaccountably missing from the URC hymnbook. I find it so easy to sing (except for a couple of lines where I had to stop because I was about to well up). You Methodists can sure recognise a good tune!

A quick look at this Sunday’s readings – the proverb “25:6,7 Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great; for it is better to be told, “Come up here,” than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.” and the Luke reading stood out at me…

Luke 14:1, 7-14
“14:1 On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.
14:7 When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honour, he told them a parable.
14:8 “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honour, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host;
14:9 and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place.
14:10 But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honoured in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.
14:11 For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
14:12 He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.
14:13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.
14:14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.””

This is challenging, but basic. However, it takes on layers of complexity when you start talking about corporate behaviour rather than individual behaviour. What if you’re hearing these words as a woman, one of the half of the human race which is over-represented among “the poor” (verse 13)? … Considering where Jesus was when he said these words, it seems not very likely that poor people were among his audience. What if you are representing a nation that has cut itself off from its usual means of support and suddenly needs any friends it can get? Which voices within that nation need to be heard? Who are “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind”? Not urban liberals like me. Who are our friends? Sometimes, it seems, people we wouldn’t naturally choose.

Hum. Anyway, at the end of that passage is another example of the Kingdom of God being where we sow where we do not reap and reap where we have not sowed.

The reorganising here is slow, monotonous 🙁 , monotonic 🙂 .

God help me to be humble,
but not so self-effacing that I forget
your passion for
“the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.”

As I was listening to a (good) sermon on Hebrews on Sunday, I got distracted, like I do. I fastened on to a tiny fragment of Hebrews 11:33, “…who through faith … shut the mouths of lions.” There’s a lot of lions about these days, powerful people whose mouths are open to speak hatred and destruction, who seek to harm poor people, oppressed people, ‘foreign’ people. May the prophets of our generation (you and I??) have the faith to say the words that will deflate the hate. It seems to me that one of the effects of social media is to keep people in touch only with those who are similar to them. The so-called urban liberal elite share plenty of jokes about Trump’s hair, but that’s a waste of time, and does not answer the real concerns of those who are not members of the in-group.

Also, from Sunday’s lectionary…

Jeremiah 1:4-10
1:4 Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” 1:6 Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” 1:7 But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. 1:8 Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.” 1:9 Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me, “Now I have put my words in your mouth. 1:10 See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

…again, faith makes the difference. I still struggle to believe this sometimes, but it seems that faith really can change us from quivering blobs of jelly into prophets.

God, give us faith…
Give us more faith,
faith to open our mouths,
faith to speak of what we know,
to discover what we do not yet know,
to believe that the world can be better.

Another picture from LEJOG. This is in Caithness…

Also, less than a day’s walk* from here 200 years ago, unarmed campaigners for democracy were attacked by the army, in the ‘Peterloo Massacre’. This was beyond tragedy: it was an outrage.

*Many of the demonstrators travelled on foot to Manchester from the outlying towns.

This from Sunday’s lectionary…

Luke 12:49-56
12:49 “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 12:50 I have a baptism with which to be baptised, and what stress I am under until it is completed! 12:51 Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 12:52 From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; 12:53 they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” 12:54 He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. 12:55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. 12:56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

“How I wish it were already kindled”. I used to be OK with seeing Jesus’ promise to bring a sword as a prediction rather than a manifesto. But here he seems actively to be wanting change, division, a sorting out. He must have got so impatient with complacency, hypocrisy, the forgetting of God’s way of living for the community as the powers that be managed to keep the religious observances going under Roman occupation. These tendencies have troubled the people of God for millennia. We too need to hear what Jesus says, hard though it is.

Janet and I are now at home, and trying to adjust to the new normality after life on the road.

Prayer…
God, stir us up and sort us out, we pray.
Help us to see the signs of the times.
Help us to recognise your will and your work
in our generation,
and to be part of it.

We are having a stopover near Doune on the way home.

Not looking forward to all those unopened letters, all the house organising etc.. Also will need to learn to be part of a new community. That will be good though.

Also there is this in the front garden of the place we are staying. What’s this all about then?…

God give us grace to know you
as we travel, in place or in mind, 
or between communities. 

Well, Janet’s done it! She arrived at John o’Groats at about midday today: it’s been a long, hard, wonderful journey. So we had an ice cream, and later, this…

Meanwhile, I found this in a neglected corner of a coach park. This memorial is on the base of the old John o’Groats signpost, now ignored. It hurts to see it like this. The dangers of the road, and people’s tragedies are part of the lejog story and the stories of their loved ones.

We thank you God 
for journeys safely completed, 
and for all that is still incomplete,
and the hopes and fears
that live in every situation.
We know also
of failure and tragedy, 
and ask for your love
and the solidarity of Christ. 

After walking a long long road, Janet is now just a midge’s proboscis away from the end. It’s a bit surreal because we’re actually staying at John o’Groats tonight, although Janet has another hour and a half to walk. Anyway, it’s very nice here, and we can see the ferry come and go. The only problem is that the internet is a bit tenuous.

The humid air of the last forever has now gone and it’s chilly outside.

Janet is getting nearer the end now. The weather has improved, and it isn’t too far to John o’Groats now.

Meanwhile, this place doesn’t seem to have got the benefits of tourism yet…

Almost all of Janet’s remaining miles are on back roads away from the North Coast 500.

The Premier league has started again, this time without being lit up by the efforts of Huddersfield Town. The weather too seems to be saying that summer is on the way out.

This walk has been fantastic, although some aspects have been difficult. But what will it be like when it comes to an end? Who knows?

A hard day for The Walker. We got an early start, to try and beat the rain which was due to start at lunchtime. But instead we got different rain. Not proper rain, falling from high up in the clouds, but drizzle falling from the low onshore clouds. It didn’t even show on the radar. But with the rising wind, it was a horrible, horizontal, soaking rain. In combination with an exposed and surprisingly fast back road, it was very unpleasant.

But with a lot of stops and starts, Janet made it to the east side of Thurso, now only 20 miles from Monday’s endpoint.

Also I’m beginning to recognise features from 16 years ago, like walls in the Caithness style….

Here is Janet walking through the mist and drizzle…

The north coast 500 is a motor tourist route around the top of Scotland. It’s the new big thing around here. It must have brought a degree of economic regeneration. But I don’t know what to think about it. It’s not popular with everyone living here. Some resent the disruption, all the new traffic squeezed into roads that weren’t designed for it, the people who drive too slow and the people who drive too fast. The top road was moderately busy today with a number of tourists. And the back road that Janet used later seemed to have some very fast traffic and heavy lorries displaced from the top road.

We too are tourists, albeit slow ones.