One of my favourite haunts in my student days was Voltaire and Rousseau, the second-hand bookshop in Otago Lane. Many a treasure was unearthed there that helped me along with an essay and sometimes there were unforgettable encounters. One Friday afternoon I found myself sharing browsing space with the Rev Ian Paisley.
I still drop in from time to time. There is a large theological section and there is usually something useful to be found. About ten years ago I was browsing and realised that there were piles of books that had belonged to someone I knew. His name was inscribed on the fly leaves. We had trained for the ministry at the same time, sharing many of the same courses, although I didn’t have much contact with him otherwise. He had a number of health issues which affected his studies and stayed with him after graduation. His time in the ministry had been challenging on a number of levels and eventually his health problems overwhelmed him. He had died while in his early fifties. He was a single man so someone must have been given the task of settling his affairs which involved clearing out his study.
What I found particularly moving was the presence of his Bible among all the other stuff. It was well-worn. I don’t think there was a page that wasn’t read, where truth was quarried, where vision was sought, where peace was craved. It was sad to think that there was no one who wanted to keep it and here it was priced £4. 50p. I was tempted to buy it but in the end thought it best to give thanks that this was such a well-worked Bible and that what it promised had now been realised in this man’s life.
That was a comfort and an inspiration. On the face of it this man’s life could be described as troubled and unfulfilled but he knew the Word, he knew the power of the Word to the end, and he was now enjoying the place Jesus has promised to all those who love Him. In a sermon Dietrich Bonhoeffer preached in the early 1930s he said:
‘No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence . . . life only really begins when it ends here on earth . . . all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up - that is for young and old alike to think about. Why are we so afraid when we think about death?‘
It was this faith that enabled Bonhoeffer to approach his execution with an astonishing calm born of a faith that had been fed by intense meditation on God’s Written Word. The Camp doctor at Flossenburg concentration camp saw him in his last minutes kneeling in prayer in his cell. Years later he wrote:
‘I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer . . . In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.’
Bonhoeffer was confident in the God who was revealed in His Word. I like to think that that same confidence burned brightly in the inner life of my colleague whose Bible was consigned to a dusty book shop but in his worst of times imparted truths that spoke of renewal in the Eternal Kingdom.
