Still Quarrying 145: The View From The Gate.

I am not permitted to stray much beyond the garden gate so my perspective on the world is limited.  Even so it is clear that traffic flow and footfall are both increasing.   In a roughly ten minute period the other day at least six cars went up Buchanan St (the Milngavie one) which would be about normal pre-Covid-19.  I can also see patches of Station Road and Strathblane Road and traffic would seem to be more frequent over the past week.  

Groups of people are wandering around.  Some obviously families out for their daily stroll but there is at least one group of about six who regularly gather for a jog.  Ever anxious to cut people as much slack as possible, it is possible that they all live in the same house.  Somehow I doubt it.  

I suppose it is understandable that people are becoming restless even impatient with the lockdown, especially in this period of fine weather.  I’m sure I am not the only one who has had a flash of some place it would be nice to go.  But the message still going out from government as advised by scientists is: ‘Stay At Home.  Protect The NHS. Save Lives.’  

Rev Richard Coles is probably the most high profile clergyman in the UK.  He co-hosts the weekly radio programme Saturday Live and has even participated in Strictly Come Dancing.  He was on the Today programme this morning paying tribute to his sister-in-law who died on Wednesday.  She had been diagnosed with cancer at the turn of the year and then fell victim to Covid-19.  In a restrained but pointed way he was critical of the complacency beginning to be shown by some people during this time.  He mentioned one man who told him that he was rather enjoying the lockdown.  ‘It’s like an extended bank holiday weekend,’ he said.  

We are all seeking to make the best of this time and no one should be denied any enjoyment that might be found despite the circumstances.  But complacency and carelessness could rub out all the advances that have been made against Covid-19.   I am making my way slowly through Charles Dickens’ Bleak House at present.  One of the many characters is Matthew Bagney, an ex-soldier, whose watchword in every aspect of life is: ‘Discipline must be maintained.’  That may resonate negatively for some people but is there any other way forward in these days?

When I received the nine page letter from the Scottish Government advising me that I was  in a vulnerable group and had to observe total lockdown I must admit there was something within me that resisted.  Not allowed out even for one walk?  Come on!  But then came the call from my local Surgery and the sensitive but firm insistence that non-observance of the restrictions could put my life and those of others at risk.  

It’s not an attractive word.  I’m sure someone has found a softer word or phrase but it hasn’t reached me.  It is all about ‘discipline’.   And like everything else it begins within us.  The Apostle Paul saw himself in a spiritual battle against the values of the ‘world.’  By that he meant the world without Christ.  His mission was to ‘demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.’  (2 Corinthians 10: 5)  The crucial step in achieving this  was ‘to take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.’  In other words, every idea had to be measured against the truths revealed in Christ and accepted or rejected accordingly.  

It’s that kind of inner discipline that we all need to practise in these days.  Not everyone acknowledges the authority of Christ over their thought processes but the call to establish the welfare of others as our priority is often heard in His teaching and that of His closest followers.  So I see adherence to government guidelines with regard to Covid-19 as part of my Christian discipleship.  In fact, ‘discipline’ and ‘discipleship’ come from the same Latin root.  ‘Discipulus’ means ‘someone who learns’.  What an indictment on a generation if it was said that it just would not learn.  

Still Quarrying 144: Change Comin' On?

Petula Clark, Sandie Shaw, Helen Shapiro, Jackie Trent.  I hope you remember them then I won’t feel so old!  They were all brought together on Radio 4 in 2012 for an episode of the Reunion series to share their experiences as 1960s girl singers.  The programme was repeated this morning.

Inevitably it was something of a nostalgia trip.  I could remember most of the songs featured and some of the events that shaped individual careers.  Interestingly, Petula Clark was the only one still recording and performing.  Sandie Shaw is a psychotherapist, Jackie Trent is now dead but at the time was involved in writing and production.  Helen Shapiro spoke about a complete turn-around in her life.  She said: ‘In 1987 I became a believer in Jesus and that changed everything.’  I don’t know the whole story but since she was raised in the Jewish faith it would be worth hearing.  She now records Gospel songs and is involved in a range of Christian work. 

I suppose it was the simplicity of her words that grabbed me and yet they encapsulate one of the great truths of the Christian faith.  ‘In 1987 I became a believer in Jesus and that changed everything.’  That doesn’t mean that a particular conversion experience is necessary but it does highlight the dynamic of faith in Jesus.  It involves change in the life of the individual.  

Wesley’s hymn ‘Love divine all loves excelling’ is often sung at weddings but it’s not about romantic love.  It concerns the love that all followers of Jesus are called to practice and which is only possible through the grace of God.  The last verse is a powerful plea:

‘Finish then thy new creation:

 Pure and spotless let us be;

 Let us see thy great salvation,

 Perfectly restored in thee,

 Change from glory into glory,

 Till in heaven we take our place,

 Till we cast our crowns before thee,

 Lost in wonder, love and praise.’  

I once made reference to that in a sermon and how it is God’s great purpose for our lives that we should be changed according to the pattern of Jesus’ life, a process that will only be complete when ‘in heaven we take our place.‘   A lady said to me afterwards: ‘I’ve been singing that hymn for over 70 years and didn’t know what it meant.’  I’m sure she is not alone in that.  How many hymns have we cheerfully sung whose meaning escapes us?   But Wesley’s point is one we need to grasp.  Faith in Jesus means being open to the changes God wants to make in us in order to bring glory to His Son.  

In his book Prayer: A Biblical Perspective Eric Alexander comments on Paul’s prayer for the Ephesian Christians that they will know ‘(God’s) incomparably great power for us who believe.  That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come.’  (Ephesians 1: 19-21)

Eric writes:

‘Do you see now why the literal, physical resurrection of Jesus lies at the heart of the Christian revelation?  It is here above everywhere that we see God’s demonstration of his incomparable power.  It is here too that we see what has happened to us who have believed: the same divine energy which brought Christ from the grave has been at work in us when we were ‘dead in trespasses and sins’ to make us alive in Christ.  Beloved, we have not just been convinced of gospel truth, won over by gospel love, and drawn to repentance and faith by gospel grace.  We have been resurrected by gospel power to become new creatures in Christ Jesus.’  (Italics mine.) 

Bob Dylan has a song ‘I Feel A Change Comin’ On’.  In these days of Covid-19 many people are having feelings that way.  At so many different levels life has changed and will never be the same again.  But how far, how deeply will people be changed for the better? Faith in Jesus offers a completely new orientation to life.  You cannot experience anything more radical than the resurrection power that changes ‘from glory into glory/Till in heaven we take our place.‘   Pray for a new people for a new world.  

Still Quarrying 143: The Quarry?

The title of this blog was inspired by an Elder in St Paul’s who was brought up on the Isle of Harris.   Angus had an uncle who when he was particularly moved by the preaching on the Lord’s Day used to say: ‘Aye the minister was a long time in the quarry last night.’  

I loved that image of the man in his study chipping away at the Scriptures to bring forward a Word for his people.  Even more so when I discovered that I am descended from at least three generations of slate quarriers on Easdale Island.  There was a time when Easdale slate was exported to Scandinavia, Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Australia.   Mary Withall has written a book entitled: Easdale, Belnahua, Luing & Seil: The Islands that Roofed The World. That is really no exaggeration.  

I have a chisel on the wall of my study which was found in one of the now redundant Easdale quarries.  I call it my Grandfather's Chisel and although there is a degree of poetic license in that it is a reminder to me of my heritage.  It is a reminder, also, of the nature of my work.  

The American poet Archibald MacLeish once spoke of the process whereby he produced a poem:

'I chip away like a stonemason who has got it into his head that there is a pigeon in that block of marble.  But there's a delight in the chipping.  At least there's a delight when your hunch that the pigeon in there is stronger than you are carries you along.'  

That's not unlike bringing a sermon to life.  You come to the work in the faith that there is something in that passage or text that is stronger than you and once you have connected with that Word it carries you along to that moment when you deliver it to God's people.  

So when I am getting ready for the Lord’s Day I am ‘in the quarry’.  

But according to Joni Eareckson I have been in the quarry in another sense.  I wrote about this in yesterday’s blog.   In a conference talk she made reference to 1 Kings 6: 7 and how the stones for Solomon’s Temple were ‘dressed’ in a quarry:  ‘. . .  no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being used.‘   Joni took the quarry to be our present experience where we sometimes have to endure the hammer and the chisel in order to be worthy of the peace of the Kingdom.  The times of battering and chipping away although heartbreaking can be the very ones that shape us and mould us according to the pattern of Jesus’ life.  

Joni would say I have been in the quarry in that sense over the last year.  There is a sense in which Covid-19 has placed us all in the quarry.  Part of our response as Christians must surely be that quarry time is not wasted time and that God is working in our lives to draw us closer to Him and establish us more firmly in His ways.   George Macleod wrote this prayer:

‘O Christ, the Master Carpenter,

 who at the last through wood and nails purchased our whole salvation;

 wield well your tools in the workshop of your world,

 so that we who come rough-hewn to your work bench may here be fashioned to a truer  beauty of your hand.’  

Still Quarrying 142: The Quarry And The Temple.

If during Holy Week you were following the events of Jesus’ last week on Earth you may have been struck by how often the Temple features.  According to the traditional chronology Jesus visited it on Palm Sunday, ‘cleansed’ it on Monday and frequently taught there probably until Thursday.  There cannot be any doubt that despite the way it had been neglected and misused Jesus held the Temple in high regard.  It symbolized God’s presence in the midst of His people; it spoke of His forgiveness through the sacrificial system; it called upon the people to give thanks expressed in ritual for His blessings.

When originally built by Solomon the Temple was an impressive place.  In 1 Kings 6 you can read the detailed instructions that had to be followed which included much gold ornamentation.  It’s one of those passages of Scripture that could make your eyes glaze over in face of all the detail given.  Reading it recently I asked myself how I could preach this!  Well, you could focus on verse 7:

‘In building the Temple only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being used.’ 

There has been some scholarly ink spilled over this.  What was the reason for this strategy?  Many interesting suggestions have been put forward but the question still remains for the preacher as to how this can be applied to the lives of believers.  

I recently heard Joni Eareckson refer to this verse in a talk she gave at a conference.  She took the quarry to be our present experience and the Temple as the eternal Kingdom of God.  The Temple is often used by the apostles as a symbol of the people of God now and what we will be in eternity, a fulfillment of everything the temple symbolized.  Joni’s point was that when we are in the quarry we have to put up with the hammer and the chisel in order to be worthy of the peace of the Kingdom.  It is through those experiences that batter and dig that we are shaped and moulded according to the pattern of Jesus’ life.

(It has just occurred to me that with this in mind the title of the blog takes on a whole new meaning!  But maybe I’ll get back to that . . .)

Joni’s take on 1 Kings 6: 7 resonated in me because over the past year I have been taken down that road of thought, sometimes encouraged, sometimes perplexed.  And often I have returned to John 15 where Jesus speaks of Himself as the vine, his people as the branches and His Father as the gardener.  Like any gardener the Father cuts off any branch that bears  no fruit ‘while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.’  (John 15: 2)  

In case you missed it this is God with a pruning knife cutting into a fruitful life to make it even more fruitful.   That may be a disturbing image for some but something like it has become common in much Covid-19 talk.  Without any reference to God hopes have been expressed, and sometimes confident predictions made that these strange and bewildering days will make a positive impact on us to the extent that we will become a more caring people, more ecologically sensitive, more appreciative of the necessities of life rather than the luxuries.  So the pain, the isolation, the bereavement, the frustration can work for our good?  

This is another example of how Christian truth is being discovered although not necessarily by an expected route.

I mentioned Albert Camus’ The Plague in an earlier blog.  At the beginning of the novel he describes the people of Oran before they were overwhelmed by the virus:

‘The people of our town were no more guilty than anyone else, they merely forgot to be modest and thought that everything was still possible for them, which implied that pestilence was impossible.  They continued with business, with making arrangements for travel and holding opinions.  Why should they have thought about the plague, which negates the future, negates journeys and debate?  They considered themselves free and no one will ever be free as long as there is plague, pestilence and famine.’  

In other words, they were a people who had lessons to learn, insight to gain, priorities to establish - and the plague was their opportunity.  Camus would not describe himself as a committed Christian but this is not far from a Christian perspective.  In the suffering of the moment an opportunity had fallen to the people of Oran to make changes.  What does a Christian do with these Covid-19 days?  Perhaps what God does with us is more important.  Quality time in the quarry can mean quality time in the Temple.  

Still Quarrying 141: Twin Poles.

The world I saw this morning was once again bright and quiet and peaceful.  Opening the door there are the sights and sounds of a soothing Creation.   It’s not easy to imagine the very different reality for so many people in these Covid-19 days.  The distress and discomfort of the sick; the nagging emptiness of the bereaved; the resource sapping efforts of carers.  But this is our world and the world as it has always been.  I read somewhere that human life is a constant vibration between positive and negative poles.  This may be the truth that the writer of Ecclesiastes was expressing when he wrote:

‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:  a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,  a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,  a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,  a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,  a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,  a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.’  (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8)

Human experience is complicated.  The positive extinguished by the negative.  The negative giving way to the positive.  But I remember that it is this perplexing life that Jesus has shared with us.  He lived this life where there is mourning as well as celebration.  He was excited when people showed insight and understanding and he was troubled by their lack of love.  He rejoiced in the life of the world around him and wept over the destruction of death.   But it didn’t end there.  Life was not just what is seen, heard, touched and experienced whether positive or negative.  He showed in His resurrection that the worst in human experience had no ultimate claim over us.  The days of sin and death were numbered.  God had plans for a Creation evacuated of everything that had ever caused His people pain.  A New Creation where a new humanity would live in the freshness and peace we can for the moment only taste.  

The night before His worst of experiences Jesus said to His disciples:

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Trust in God; trust also in me.  In my Father’s house    there are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you.  I am going to prepare a place for you.’  (John 14: 1-2)

Still Quarrying 140: Key To Faith.

I am not permitted to stray beyond the bounds of the garden but from time to time I stand at the gate taking in the deserted street and listening to the birdsong.   The other week I noticed a rusty key lying on the pavement nearby.  It was still there this morning.  I don’t think it is any great loss to anyone.  It looks like it may have unlocked a case or an untrustworthy padlock. 

It made me think of that episode in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress when Christian and his companion Hopeful are taken captive by Giant Despair and locked in a dungeon in his Doubting Castle.  They endure quite a time of inner darkness with Giant Despair pressurising them to deny their faith and even to do away with themselves.  Then after a time of prayer Christian remembers that he possesses a key called ‘Promise’ that will open any lock in Doubting Castle.  Encouraged to use it by Hopeful the dungeon door and all the other doors in Doubting Castle fly open.  

It’s allegory of course, a way of describing the darkness that sometimes falls on a Christian’s inner life to the extent that they might even begin to doubt God and His ways.  It might seem a bit weak that Christian possessed the answer to his problem all through his experience.  All he had to do was remember?  But that is the point.  Bunyan was well aware that the way out of all our inner darkness, the key to once again enjoying the light is to remember the promises of God.  Too often they seem to have departed from our consciousness and yet they are the key to growing in faith.  

‘God is our refuge and our strength, an ever present help in time of trouble.’  (Psalm 46: 1)

That is a promise.

‘I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’  (Matthew 28: 20)

That is a promise.

‘We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.’  (Romans 8: 28)

That is a promise.

‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.’  (1 John 1: 9)

That is a promise.

‘I am the resurrection and the life.  If anyone has faith in me even though they die they will come to life.  And no one who is alive and has faith in me will ever die.’  (John 11: 25-26.)

That is a promise.

Whenever you find them in Scripture, these promises, memorise them, plant them in your inner being so that they will bloom in your time of need.  

Alexander Whyte was a prominent figure in the Free Church of Scotland in the late 19th century and early 20th century.  When he would visit the sick and dying he would read the promises in Scripture with regard to God’s help in the present and the hope of the life to come.  He would often finish with saying: ‘Now put that under your tongue and suck it like a sweetie.’  

We need to do this with the promises.  Let them dissolve into our inner being until they become part of our spiritual DNA.   Ready whenever we fall into the clutches of Giant Despair and know the darkness of his dungeon to be our strength and peace.

Still Quarrying 139: Self Portrait.

I’ve sometimes wondered what lies behind the self-portrait.  Many accomplished artists have produced them and the knee-jerk reaction is to put it down to egotism.  You would only really paint a portrait of someone you regard as being significant in some way so ‘Here I am!’  That may be the case with some but for most artists it’s an exercise in self-understanding, a way into the depths that shape the person.  If we are honest we are all a bit of a mystery to ourselves, so many contradictions, flashes of heaven, shadows of hell.  If you have the gift then self-portrait is a way of seeing yourself, even confronting yourself, getting in touch with those motivations that produce the good or the bad.  

I’m sure that was what Vincent Van Gogh was doing in his self-portraits.  It is thought that he produced 39 in his lifetime which places him among the most prolific self-portraitists of all time.  That may suggest a high degree of self-obsession but it is understandable in a man who had many struggles in his inner life, mental and spiritual, at times was out of control but longed for peace.  Was self-portrait a means of getting a grip on his life?

One of my favourites is ‘Self-Portrait As Painter’ which you can see above.  This is the way Vincent liked to think of himself, creating, bringing something out of nothing, involved in the one thing that gave him a sense of peace.   That becomes all the more significant when you are told that it was painted at a time of physical and mental exhaustion.   He explained this in a letter to his sister and how he deliberately shows himself with ‘wrinkles in forehead and around the mouth, stiffly wooden, a very red beard, quite unkempt and sad.’  

It’s the eyes that strike me, almost black with just some points of light.  Is this something to do with the maxim that the eyes are the window to the soul?  Vincent was raised in a Christian home, he studied theology, he was a missionary for a time in a mining district in Southern Belgium.  He would know the words of Jesus:

 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy,your whole body will be full of light.  But if your eyes are unhealthy,your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”  (Matthew 6: 22-23)

What Jesus is talking about here is our spiritual orientation.  We sometimes speak of people’s eyes being ‘full’ of the things they want most of all.  These words of Jesus are bookended by teaching on the danger of eyes being full of material things and money.  If that is the case, if that is the orientation of our inner being, then we are in darkness.   I am not sure that this was specifically the darkness Vincent knew within himself but he knew what it was to experience spiritual disorientation, to have his eyes stray from God’s truth and God’s ways.  At a time of vulnerability on several different levels the self-portrait has to show his awareness of the darkness within.

I find myself hoping that Vincent had someone who could assure him that this was a common experience of the great men and women in Scripture.  People who experienced the reality of God but also struggled with the fragility of their humanity, the tendencies    that drew them away from God.  Why else would David pray:

‘Teach me your way, O Lord,

 and I will walk in your truth;

 give me an undivided heart,

 that I may fear your name.’  (Psalm 86: 11)

David is described as ‘a man after (God’s) own heart’ (1 Samuel 13: 14) and yet he was aware of his own vulnerability, that he constantly needed God’s truth to maintain an ‘undivided heart’,  a sound spiritual orientation, a life as Jesus was to say ‘full of light.’