Christian

Wee Free Frankenstein

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This time last year, I was a sinner saved by grace, marvelling at the year of blessings I’d enjoyed since coming out for Christ. Today, I am writing my one hundredth blog, almost a year on from where it all began – aptly enough, at the Stornoway communion.

When I met the man who would somehow become my blogging mentor, I was minding my own business, enjoying tea and fellowship and – more than likely – one of the house special pancakes. We discussed other subjects, I think, before we got round to talk of blogging.
‘You should think consider getting your thoughts down in a blog of your own’, he said, casually and unwittingly creating a monster every bit as uncontrollable as the one cobbled together by Dr Frankenstein. I am one of those dim-witted and suggestible Wee Free women you’ve heard tell of and so, I duly trotted off home to dream of blogging.

Only when the communion weekend was over could I even begin to think of beginning. I didn’t want to do anything controversial which might bring the wrath of the Session down on my head, so I wrote an article about the Free Church and the fairies.

I had long been thinking it was high time we aired the positive influence of churches like the Wee Frees (other denominations are available) on our community. The church had not, historically, engaged in debate about its demeanour or influence, maintaining a dignified silence despite heavy and frequently unwarranted criticism.

Someone else less dignified was going to have to speak up for it. And I owed that much.

You see, this time last February, I was able to look back on almost two years without my husband, and see where the church had been his substitute. I was able to appreciate the anchorage it had provided, the purpose, the kindness. Its loving arms had held me up through those hard, hard months. Yes, it was a challenge to be there sometimes, but it was more of a challenge not to be.

And so the blog really began as a labour of love. Love for my community, for my heritage, for my church and, most of all, for my Lord.

I don’t think I appreciated just how much those loves would upset other people. You see, even although I have no power except the one vote that we all get on gaining the requisite age, my opinions seem revoltingly offensive to some. All I have is this blog, through which I continue to voice my loves. It offends me when people say of Lewis that there is no distinctive culture. Somehow, I feel like Scarlett O’ Hara slapping her petulant sister, and saying, ‘don’t say you hate Tara – it’s the same as hating ma and pa’.

It saddens me that in this supposedly enlightened age, I have to explain that loving my heritage – Gaelic, crofting, Free Church – does not make me a bigot. I do not despise people who are different; but I do question why my difference, the distinctiveness of Lewis has to be a problem to solve, not an attribute to celebrate.

I am sad that a narrative has crept in which is entirely critical of this island. It’s backward, it’s repressed, it’s secretive, it’s got a dark side. Well, maybe I’m just the delusional closed mind some say I am, but that is not my Lewis.

My Lewis is warm and welcoming. It is that particular brand of island humour which manages to be sharp and gentle all at once. Lewis people are polite, never ones to push themselves forward or demand a hearing. And they are unfailingly kind. This is an island of hands clasped in friendship, of ‘placing’ one another, of being interested. When you die in Lewis, there will always be someone to attend your funeral.

We respect the dead, but crucially, we don’t wait until then – we respect the living too.

Blogging has been a revelation, then. Like a poultice, it seems to have drawn an awful lot of poison to the surface. It is no surprise in one respect: Christians are prepared to be hated, after all, for the sake of who they follow. But He does not send us out into the field unprepared, or unarmed. Their slings and arrows may graze, but the wounds they leave, like their arguments, are always superficial.

Far and away the greatest revelation, though, has not been the hatred – the anonymous messages, the disrespectful language, the bullying; it has been the fullness of God’s love that I have experienced through writing the blog.

He has brought me into contact with so many of His people through it. These people have encircled me with prayer and upheld me in all manner of trouble – even, I suspect, though they sometimes didn’t know it. Messages of support will come when I am on the point of giving in; a portion of Scripture shared when my grief is too heavy a burden; links to music that will uplift my heart when it is struggling to find joy.

I learned something so important last year, which I know I have alluded to before. Why wouldn’t I – it was life-changing; I will share it every chance I get. And I must apologise to the troll who accused me recently of getting all my thinking from the pulpit, but this DID emanate from just that source.

In all of our trials, we are not to be worried how we will maintain our faith in God; we are to see them as a means to experience more of His love for us.

I have experienced His love so abundantly that one hundred blogs more would not do it justice. He has never left my side, and I will not leave His. Where His name is trodden on and where His church and His people, who are also my people, are spat at, I will also go to be spat at.

Love me, despise me, ignore me – I am not going away.

 

Fighting Fire With Love

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After the morning service last Sunday, I drove past An Lanntair, where a small group of journalists had gathered. The arts centre is opening for three Sundays in the first quarter of the year, in an attempt to establish demand for the particular brand of entertainment it provides. This is newsworthy, I imagine, because people from outwith Lewis lap up news stories about how weird the island is, and how anachronistic. We get the same thing with Gaelic too; we’re used to it.

Sadly, there are local people who all too happily play up to the stereotypes, however, telling the media what they want to hear. They talk broadly of oppression and bullying by the church, of ministers apoplectic with rage because they are losing their death-grip on the local populace. One person even tried to tell me that the opening of leisure facilities on a Sunday would alleviate social exclusion.

Bear in mind that one of the main causes of social exclusion in Scotland is poverty. And bear in mind, also, that a film ticket for An Lanntair costs £7.

But, flawed logic notwithstanding, Sunday was an epiphany for me. I found myself driving home that afternoon, reflecting on the plight of young people in a community which offers them scant opportunities. Leisure facilities are few and far between, and access to these often prohibitively expensive. Political corruption further restricts their chances of personal development and fulfilment. And the church does not want to loosen its hold on them.

The Eastern Orthodox church, that is.

You see, I didn’t go straight home from church but, instead, listened to a presentation from two young Christians to our Sunday School kids, about their trip to Moldova last year. They spoke of a country which is difficult to live in, a society which hardens people because they have to put self-protection ahead of anything else. The teenagers they met at the church camp, funded by donations from Lewis, were getting a week out of a sometimes challenging home life.

The speaker laughed as he recalled seeing the campers arriving. He expected primary school age children, but instead was shocked to see tall, strapping lads with beards disembark from the bus. Later, one of them threw him bodily into the swimming pool, just because he could.

In my head, I knew how the rest of this talk would go. The leaders would tell how they were intimidated by these rough teenagers, but ultimately the week went fine and they themselves returned to Lewis with a renewed sense of thankfulness for having so much, not least a safe place to live and be themselves.
I was wrong.

‘By the end of it we felt quite envious’, the speaker continued. Despite the many challenges in their lives – the poverty, the political corruption, the brutality of society – they were accomplished musicians and sportspeople, each one seemingly full of aptitude in everything they tried. And the people were generous with the little they had. Our speaker mentioned visiting old ladies in the local church congregation and he paid them the highest compliment that anyone can:
‘It was like visiting a cailleach from Lewis, we were plied with so much food’.

Triumphing over adversity; being generous with what little they have; welcoming the stranger. For those of us who are conversant with the Gospel, this is familiar territory, at least in theory. How wonderful to have it illustrated in these teenagers and their wider community; and how wonderful to hear about the tough young man, the ‘trouble’ of the group and the change which was wrought in him through closer acquaintance with Jesus.

These tough exteriors, they are cultivated by the harshness of this world – layer upon layer of resistance builds up over time so that no one can get in.

No one, that is, except the Saviour.

We are all too easily fooled by a façade, but He never is. I see only your outward demeanour, the face you choose to present; and if you try to act tough, or unconcerned about something, I will accept that is who you are.

Jesus, though, He doesn’t even see your exterior. His relationship is directly with your heart. If you are lonely, or afraid; if you are hurt, or angry, He knows.

The folk who went to Moldova were shown something startling while they were there: a fire engine which had once served Stornoway. Emergency services in Lewis and elsewhere in the Gàidhealtachd donated equipment. Works of necessity and mercy, you see, go on wherever we are in the world. Hearts in one place go out to those in another, far away.

There actually is no far away in Christ, though. If we are in Him, then we are brothers and sisters. We do for one another, not because we are good, but because He is. We love because He first loved us.

That love gives the youngsters in Moldova a chance. It is not that their lives are hard, or that they live in dire poverty; though those things are certainly true. The camp is not merely a lovely week of just being young, free from responsibilities and cares, though it is all of that also.

It is actually a chance to see the Saviour’s work in the love of strangers from Scotland. These volunteers go to Moldova, not because they believe in children’s rights to leisure, but because they believe in the children’s need of the Saviour.

They believe because they have seen it in themselves. Charity like this truly means love; how good would it be if that kind of charity really could begin at home.

 

The Night and the Sacrifice

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The sinister side of Stornoway Free Church was revealed to me last Sunday when I was taken aside and threatened by our Assistant Minister. ‘Do NOT record this’, he hissed. Oh my goodness, I thought, all the conspiracy theories were right – he actually suspects me of wearing a wire. But then his meaning dawned on me. Having been called in to take the service at short notice, he didn’t want the sermon recorded as he’d already preached it elsewhere.

His general demeanour was so menacing, however, that I sat with my arms folded throughout the service just so that he could clearly see that I wasn’t even touching the audio equipment. Still, I did manage to take on board some of what he was saying.

It was about Abraham going up to Mount Moriah to sacrifice his son, Isaac, because God had commanded him to do so. The message of this lovely, familiar incident is one of extraordinary faith, of course. Christians aspire to be like Abraham, prepared to give up that which he loves because his God desires it. Imagine, you find yourself thinking, that level of obedience.

Imagine, the minister said, the night before that sacrifice.

We can probably all do that. I have certainly had those nights. Oh, not sacrifice, no – but long, sleepless hours, dreading what the morning will bring. What will the scan show? Has the oncologist got bad news for us? How will I get through my husband’s funeral service?

It’s difficult for me not to let my mind dwell on what I’ve lost, at this time of year more than any other. From January through to March, when Donnie died, I relive the gradual loss of hope, the coming to terms, the apparent end of everything

Perhaps Abraham also felt that way on what he thought would be his final journey with Isaac, that longed-for son of his old age. But he kept putting one foot in front of the other. It was a faith journey, in the truest sense.

Mine was different. I took every step in resistance to what God was gently telling us. If my stubbornness could have kept my husband alive, he’d be here now.

The long, dark nights before, though, they pass, and even they must give way to morning.

How dreadful that dawn must have seemed to Abraham. Despite never having to do what he did, it is not impossible to empathise with him. My faith has not made such demands on me, probably because I do not possess the faith of Abraham. Yet, I can enter into his suffering in a small way, because I can recall the terrible fear that comes in knowing death is close by.

But what about the journey home, and the night after? It is hard to imagine that Abraham’s bed was much easier. His heart must have been overflowing with love for God who had stayed his hand at the eleventh hour and restored Isaac to him. He must have been filled with wonder at the meaning of his test on the mountain. And he was surely reassured at the willingness his son, Isaac, displayed to be the sacrifice that God required.

I don’t think that the joy and the thankfulness were just because Isaac was alive, though. That is not the world-fixated way that faith works. Christian joy is not tied to such variables as life or death.

Donnie died, but I can understand Abraham’s night after better even than his night before.

He did not require a sacrifice from Abraham but, then, He did not require one of me either. God’s great kindness to me was in taking, rather than asking me to give – because unlike faithful Abraham, I would have sinned my soul and refused. And if that route had been open to me, what a world of blessing I would have denied us both.

The night before is all about dread. But the night after, you see His hand, His nail-marked hand guiding you from the place of sacrifice to the place of peace and of love. You rest in Him, and then you see the journey differently because He is with you in it, always.

And in the light of being loved by Him, you forget there ever was a night before.

 

 

 

Lewis Revival – A Reaping Time

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When the sign reading ‘Lewis Revival’ went up above a Cromwell Street shopfront in Stornoway , I’m sure it stirred a similar train of thought in the minds of many onlookers. It was not lovely vintage cups, or upcycled furniture I pictured, though, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone.

There are certain episodes in this island’s past which inform its cultural identity.

As we approach the centenary, of course, people are well aware of the ‘Iolaire’ disaster, when so many men of Lewis and Harris lost their lives within sight of home. That marked this community deeply.

Only a few years after, many more would leave forever on other ships – the ‘Marloch’, The ‘Canada’ and the ‘Metagama’: names that would resonate down through the years.

Lewis was not easy to live in. It struggled to support its native population and, frequently, the answer offered to the poor was ‘go elsewhere ’.

We hear their story often. The Lewis diaspora. They went to the ends of the earth and made the best of it. Some prospered. And some didn’t. Eventually, their deaths would be reported in the ‘Stornoway Gazette’, because, no matter where they were in the world, they belonged here. It was circumstance that sent them away.

Or, to give it another name, providence.

And that same providence kept others at home. Gradually, they honed a community from what was left. Even another war did not finish them.

Far from it.

The generation of young men who fought the war against Hitler, they were the old men of my childhood. There was something about many of them – a kindness, a patience and a quiet, dignified strength. They had seen horrors that my pampered mind cannot conjure. And they came back to this quiet place to make a life.

Only four years after their return, a spiritual awakening began in Barvas. Such events can seem sudden to us, looking as we do through the lens of history.

But God prepares the ground before he plants. Mary Peckham, a reluctant convert in 1950, explained to an American audience many years later what the Lewis of her youth was like. She described how ‘gabhail an leabhair’ was the norm in every household – family worship morning and evening. Unconverted people, that is, as well as Christians. Everyone. And the children were educated in Scripture and in the Shorter Catechism. Little children were learning some very big truths.

And as a result, she said, when God sent His spirit down, ‘there was fuel to burn’.

You cannot make a fire by simply lighting a match, after all. There has to be fuel, and something to make it catch.

I was confined to the house recently because of a stubborn flu. And while I was, I listened to a Gaelic sermon I’d missed in our own church. It was about revival as prayed for in Psalm 126.

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,we were like those who dreamed.

Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.

The psalmist is not indulging in wistful daydreams about better days long ago. He evokes an older time of bondage from which God released His people, asking – and believing – that He will do so again.

Being aware of our history and of our spiritual heritage as an island people is not an academic exercise, however, and nor is it a foray into nostalgia.
The writer of psalm 126 is not asking God to make things exactly as they were in the glorious days gone by. That wouldn’t benefit anyone, attractive though it may seem.

No, the reason we need to remember these times of revival is so that we pray in earnest that He will send His spirit down again. Nothing short of that will bring the spiritual growth we so desperately desire to see.

This time, though, the fuel is more scattered. While we meditate on God’s goodness in past days of revival, and ask Him in His mercy to remember us once more, there is something else we need to do.

We need to gather together, building up in prayer and fellowship what will become His fire when He chooses the moment to send forth the spark of life.

The history of Lewis is worth keeping in our consciousness because through it, God’s faithfulness frequently shines. As a people, we bore with providence and held fast to Him. I have written elsewhere of how the twin demons of war and emigration were faced down with the singing of psalms. God’s providence is our inheritance, the motto of the old town council, says it best.

He has shown Himself faithful through it all; what reason have we to think that He will fail us now?

He hasn’t; He won’t. We must bear with His timescales and His plan. Think of what he has brought us from and what He has brought us to. Think of who He is and what He has done.

That’s who we are counting on – not governments, or economists, not churches, and certainly not ourselves.

His providence is our inheritance, and our heritage is established by Him. It is an unquenchable flame, and He is not finished with us yet.

 

Promise Postponed – But Unbroken

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I didn’t know Rev Kenny MacDonald but, somehow, everyone knew him. He was well-kent for the saddest of reasons – because his teenage daughter, Alison, had gone off to Kashmir in 1981 . . . and vanished. But Kenny never gave up his belief that he would see her again.

Sometime in the nineties, a television programme was made. A teenager myself at the time of its broadcast, I cannot forget the unbearably poignant image of Kenny on a hillside in Sonamarg, spelling out her name in large, white stones. What pain, what bravery, what faith. Older now, I still cannot begin to imagine what it must have cost him to leave that place again, without his girl.

And then, the realisation that he was losing his sight. Oh, I remember thinking, how awful if he goes blind before Alison comes back. Then all his assertions that he would see her again will come to nothing. I thought.

Their story had become such a part of Highland and Island consciousness. Now and again, a wee ripple, a rumour that she had been found. These always came to nothing, though. Kenny and his wife, Reta, were always left empty-handed. Everyone willed the story to end happily, for Alison to just turn up – perhaps married, a mother; but just to turn up and give him peace.

As I say, I never met him, but you didn’t actually feel that he lacked peace, as such. Every interview I ever saw or read just showed me again how much faith it was possible for one person to have. And how much love, as a father. He remained convinced that his daughter was alive and, in one of the truest examples of what fatherhood surely ought to be, he never stopped trying to reach her.

I remember that documentary and thinking how incredible it would be if Alison should actually find those stones spelling out her name across the hillside. After nearly twenty years of separation, to know that her father still remembered, and was still looking for her, would surely mean everything.

We cannot know why God permitted any of this: Alison’s disappearance, the long years without answers, or – perhaps most difficult of all – Kenny’s relentless conviction that she was still alive. There were certainly times when it seemed awfully cruel that a man of faith should believe in something he did not see fulfilled.

Of course, other men of faith, even more famous than Kenny MacDonald, have walked that path before. Moses, despite all that he did in faithfully leading the children of Israel, did not himself enter the promised land. He believed in it, he strove for it, and he inspired others to believe in it also but, at the last, he was not to experience it for himself.

Who would say that Moses’ faith was in vain, though? It was because of his faith that so many others would enter the land of promise; it was his steadfast following of God that had enabled him to lead them out of danger so many times.

And Kenny’s faith teaches me something as well. His unswerving belief, and his love for his Lord enabled him to serve Christ while never letting down the burden of fatherhood laid upon him. What we all marvelled at was his devotion; the devotion to his family, to Alison, was part of his devotion to the God who had set him free. For him, I think, it was simple, though it cannot ever have been easy.

God doesn’t promise ease to His people here in this vale of tears. But He does promise an eternity that cannot be described.

Moses reappears in the New Testament, in Matthew 17, standing upon the mount of Transfiguration. Many Biblical scholars say that this mountain was likely to have been in the Promised Land. If so, then Moses did finally stand there, though not in the way he may have thought.

God’s ways and plans are not ours. That much is beyond debate. His timescales are not ours either.

Though Kenny MacDonald has gone to be with his Lord, our hopes that Alison will be restored to her family do not dim.

And because Kenny has gone to be with her Lord, we are certain he will enjoy that reunion with Alison he so desired to see. But it will be much more perfect than the one we all imagined.

What Would You Have Me Do?

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I am, more often than not, a failure as a Christian. The ways in which I let Him down, get it wrong and just wilfully disobey are seemingly endless. But the sins which hurt the most are repeat offences. It tells me what kind of material He’s got to work with in me when He needs to give the same lesson over and over.

What was it this time? Forgiveness. Largeness of heart. Grace. Denial of self. These are just a few of the many things I don’t do well.

It’s been a practice of mine for a while now to get involved in online conversations where the cause of Christ is being discussed. Remedial Christian I may be, but I do, of course, realise that I cannot change the atheist heart, nor save the unbelieving soul. Neither, however, do I think that I should let ignorance and misrepresentation go unchallenged. So I don’t. Many Christians probably think I should leave it alone; and I know that many atheists feel that way also.

These things can escalate and a discussion forum on local democracy led to a series of misunderstandings between myself and someone I had considered a friend. We were not on speaking terms by the time it was all over.

I should have climbed down -not on matters of Christian principle, of course not, but on my own ego. What people think of me, or say, or write when I am properly witnessing for Christ, that doesn’t matter. The day I accepted Him, I was meant to die to self. All such brickbats are not meant to matter in the light of His glory and grace.

But I couldn’t let this go. No – correction – I wouldn’t let this go.

It took a Quaker to make this Wee Free penitent. He knew, somehow, of the ill-feeling between me and this other person, and suggested very gently that I should show her a modicum of support in something very brave she did recently.

Well, I’m not going to lie. He floored me with his mild common sense, and his pure motive. I thought about it from every angle and realised that the only thing preventing me from doing as he said was my own pride.

So I swallowed it. Not as graciously as I could, or should, have. But she, I think, felt as I did and all these months of bitterness and rancour swiftly evaporated.

And it felt good. I didn’t know what a weight had been pressing on my conscience until it was lifted. All because of grace. Oh, not mine. No, God’s grace at work in this man who has somehow fallen into step with me along the journey. If it had been dependent upon me letting go of my pride . . . well, I shudder to think what a state my life would be in.

It set me thinking about people, and about the latent power of the online community. All of this reconciliation hinged, as I said, on God’s intervention. But it was made possible through digital, not face-to-face, connections.

Some folk dismiss social media as being a bit of a fantasy land, somewhere Christians should avoid. I disagree. It is a mirror-image of this world with all the wickedness and danger that entails. There are people there, teetering sometimes on the edge of danger.

So, shouldn’t Christians be there too, shining a light into the dark corners? Isn’t the internet a digital mission field?

I am profoundly grateful to God for putting the wise Quaker in my life, and for teaching me so gently that forgiveness and love must not be forsaken, especially in defending the cause of Christ.

When Christ was nailed to the cross, His Iove never wavered. He was still every inch the Saviour. Remember Satan, in the last blog – he knows he’s defeated, and wants to take as many with him as he can.

Jesus Christ knew at Calvary that victory was His. And as He looked down on the soldiers casting lots for His garments, what revenge did He plan?

‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’.

Though we may reject Him and plot against His cause, He still loves and wants to take as many with Him in glory as He can.

And if I want to be like Him in the smallest way, I need to cultivate that love too.

Mercifully, He reminds me of this when I need reminding. Pray for me that I will not forget this lesson in humility and grace. And pray that, when any of us speaks up for Christ, we ask Him first:

‘What would You have me do?’

Learning From The Devil’s Example

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There is at least one respect in which I differ from the devil. When I am frightened, I become paralysed and unable to do anything. Both times my husband underwent lifesaving surgery, I sat in the same spot on the sofa, cold and sick-feeling. My plans of cleaning the fridge, or tidying out the cupboards to distract myself . . . well, they didn’t happen. I couldn’t even move.

But Satan doesn’t let fear stop him in his tracks. Actually, it makes him busier than ever. Really up against it, he has nothing left to lose.

And even although his defeat has already been secured, he does not mean to go down without a fight – and to take as many of us with him as he can. He already has many hostages in his thrall. Here’s the clever bit, though: they don’t know that they’re captive; they believe that they’re free.

He isn’t called the father of lies for nothing. His artistry is such that the people who will follow him anywhere he leads are the very ones who would deny his existence. They don’t believe in him, except as a slightly comical character in fiction, a scorched, cloven-hoofed cartoon demon, jabbing at you with his trident.

But he does exist – and he would never be so unsubtle as to use his weapons in that way. He is as likely to croon as he is to jab.

If you don’t believe in his existence, then you do not believe in God either. This is why the devil does not push his ego, or insist that you acknowledge him. If you did, there is much more chance that his wiles would fail; that you would turn from his eternal ugliness to God’s eternal purity.

He doesn’t want that, though, so he lets you believe your infantile fiction – that all we are, all we have, came from nothing, is governed by nothing, and will return to nothing.

That is your experience as an atheist. Life is brief and, for some, filled with suffering. The nothing from which we came is neither moral nor immoral, and so looks on suffering and rejoicing unmoved. Yet, from some human hearts, sympathy comes. From themselves, for there is no guiding principle.

But there is still the convenience of having God to blame. When something goes wrong, you can spit at Christians, ‘where is your God now?’

What an unutterably sad state of affairs. This is the real God delusion. Atheists don’t disbelieve in Him – they hate Him. They say he’s a childish fantasy, but they blame Him for everything that is wrong.

They hate Him because they have remade Him in their own image. The object of their ridicule is not the Christian God. And Satan laughs as he looks on from the sidelines.

When that frenzy of God-hating is whipped up to its maximum, those who know He is there and love Him, they can become discouraged. It is easy to look around you at the degraded state of society and feel the power of darkness is about to overwhelm.

Yet we have this truth. The darkness cannot overpower the light. Always, the latter drives out the former.

Those who have been duped, of course, don’t think they’re dwelling in darkness because they haven’t yet seen the great light. They believe in their own triumvirate: gods of tolerance, reason and self-fulfilment.

These false idols are all that is available to a people who came from nothing, live for nothing, and will return to nothing.

I am more than aware of the challenge of telling people whose ears are stopped that there is something beyond what they are pleased to call reason. You can spend many hours faithfully telling them who Christ is, only to have your face slapped. They will tell you that they respect your beliefs, even as they spit on them.

This is the world that crucified our Lord, and would do it again. Not for anything He has done against them, because there is nothing. In truth, He has gone beyond anything they could dream of asking, and though they keep on rejecting Him, still He holds out those broken hands to beckon them to Himself.

They reject Him, they say, because they cannot believe such a fantastical tale. And Satan nods his agreement – much better to stick with him, the arch-liar. He knows they can’t see him and don’t believe he’s there.

And that they won’t know until it’s too late.

Unlike Satan, Christ does not dupe the unwary. His people in this world cannot do that either. Instead, we have to be relentless in holding out the truth. Those who seem unlikely to realise the danger are the ones we owe most to, because we were once just as blind as they. We need to tell them, and tell them, and tell them again. Though they beg us to be quiet, or put their hands over their ears, we need to go on with our witness.

So, I suppose that I have to try to be a bit more like the devil in that one respect. Instead of allowing myself to be rooted to the spot by fear, I have to get busy. The motivation is that incomparable truth: that Christ has already overcome the world, and vanquished its prince. Satan fights tirelessly, knowing he’s been beaten; we should do the same, confident of victory.

And we need, above everything else, to keep the unbelievers in our prayers. That, I think, is the action Satan fears most of all.

 

 

None So Secular As Those Who Will Not See

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I haven’t read one article from within Lewis which supports the plans of An Lanntair to open on Sundays. There have been several ill-informed ‘national’ contributions, of course, but I think we can safely discount those. After all, what do they know of this community, or what shapes it? And, more pertinently, what do they care?

It takes the arrogance of imperialism to say to a minority cultural group that they are wrong about their own identity. This is not me saying to people who have moved into Lewis that they have no right to an opinion, or a voice. Of course they do. But I am saying that they have no right to tell me that they understand my heritage better than I do. They generously permit tweed and Gaelic (by which they mean the language only, not the other stuff that no one can teach you) and music . . . but not God.

God came here on a magic carpet of stories from the Middle East. He’s the only kind of immigrant the Western Isles Secular Society disapproves of. We’re allowed to call Him an ‘incomer’, or anything else we want.

But they’re not anti-religion. They are vehemently denying that accusation all over social media this weekend. Frustrated by our native ignorance, they keep asking why no one understands that secularism is not against Christianity. If only we would read their mission statement, we would know that they are not against the faith of many in this island.

Oh, aren’t they?

Still, if their Facebook page says so, it must be true. It’s not as though they ever have a go at Christians, or mock their beliefs. They expect us to ignore their sometimes defamatory remarks about individuals, the fact that disgraceful profanity and utter disrespect goes unmoderated, their consistent targeting of the Lewis Sabbath, their blatant lies about the behaviour of local church people . . . and just accept their definition of secularism?

I’m sorry, Western Isles Secular Society, but we Christians are going to need more evidence. We can’t just blindly accept this kind of thing.

What I do see, this week in particular, is a group which cannot tolerate the views of others when they fall contrary to their own. Local blogger, Hebrides Writer, was okay when she was vocally supporting their Sunday swimming campaign, but she has suffered a catastrophic fall from grace by coming out against An Lanntair’s arrogant stance on Sunday film showings. Some have tried valiantly to be measured in their response, but in their own discussion group, she has been pilloried in ways that are utterly unwarranted by anything she has written.

She even has the temerity to be related to someone with connections to An Lanntair. In Lewis! Smaoinich!

And, most defamatory of all, she now stands accused of being ‘anti-secular and pro-faith’. Horror of horrors.

No WISS moderator has stepped in to remove this comment, nor have any of the other members pointed out the obvious. Well, I mean, it contradicts their claim that secularism and faith are not at odds, doesn’t it?

But we don’t need them to tell us what secularism is. We know what it is. God knows what it is.

Actually, the only people who don’t know, are the secularists themselves.

They have long pitied the likes of me in my blind ignorance. Now, they fear for the safety and the sanity of Hebrides Writer because she has deviated from what the cult expects.

I wish they would try to understand, not Christians, but Christ. How I wish they would open their Bibles and read, and find there a man who will tell them everything they ever did.
Just this week, I saw their likeness in His book. On Wednesday evening in church, we read the account of the Israelites and the golden calf they made to worship. When they had built an altar to it, they declared the next day a feast day for the Lord.

They thought, you see, that they could have everything. Their idea was to give themselves over to doing what they wanted, and offer a sop to God to appease Him. It was their way of pretending that there is room for following Him, and for pleasing yourself.

Or, like one of the anti-Sabbatarians put it, ‘before long it will be the new norm and the culture of the quiet Sunday will continue as usual’.

No, I’m afraid that just isn’t how it works. You have to pick a side. And it has to be the right side.

Forget your movies, people, I know how this ends.

I’ve read the Book.

Lewis Sundays: A Love Song (Not a Lament)

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Traditionally, this island has marked itself out from other places by continuing to maintain a six-day culture. On Sunday, everything winds down and the pace of life slows to something a little closer to the ticking of nature’s clock.

People rise later, eat a leisurely breakfast, walk the dog a little further. And yes, for some, it affords better quality time with their family. Children don’t have to be bundled into clothes and hurried off to school; parents’ heads are not already half-filled with the cares of the working day before they even leave home.

A slower day. Time to listen. The opportunity to talk, and to take pleasure in one another’s company.

It is an oasis in the midst of a world which increasingly lives at breakneck speed. My late husband and I used to enjoy our Sundays to the maximum. We would save the Saturday papers and enjoy a lazy wallow in the supplements with a breakfast of croissants and toasted muffins. Then, we would head out for a long walk or a drive somewhere, before coming home to prepare a roast dinner and watch a film.

In my last post, which I thought was about my sadness at the vandalism of the Lewis Sabbath, and my pity for the architects of its demise, I was accused of being self-righteous. I can only assume that those making this accusation thought I was saying that I was somehow better than them because I don’t want An Lanntair to open on Sundays and they do.

If that’s what people think I’m saying, then I am really not being clear enough, and for that I apologise.

How could I possibly think myself better than them when I was once as they are now? I used to think that it was okay for myself and Donnie to spend Sundays the way we wanted because we only had the weekend together. He worked away from home all week and we felt this entitled us to be a little selfish with the time we did have with one another. We felt this, even though neither of us knew just how short our time together would be.

I understand better than the secularists think because, like them, I was comfortable in my rebellion. It suited me; I was happy. If someone had said to me then that what we were doing was wrong, I would not have understood. Perhaps I would even have been offended.

But all of that changed when my eyes were opened to the truth. Living as you please, spending time with the people you love, doing the things you enjoy – yes, that all feels wonderful. What, though, are we made for? Are we really just here for endless days of doing what feels good in the moment? At the end of a long life, would I be content to look back on all the Saturday supplements I’d read, and all the potatoes I’d roasted, and say, ‘that was a life well lived’?

The change in me is not the thing of which I boast either. If I am self-righteous, my conversion cannot possibly be the source of it. Any Christian will tell you that they are not chosen by God for His mercy because they deserve it, because there is anything in them which causes Him to think, ‘this is promising – I can do something with her’.

After all, if I deserved it, we would hardly call it mercy.

A friend of mine – an atheist – said of my new-found faith, ‘I’m not surprised – you were always a believer’. It was a low point for me because her words caused me to realise afresh the huge gulf of understanding that exists between the Christian and the atheist. She was referring to the fact that I had always believed in the existence of God.

As any Christian will tell you, though, that is not believing. The kind of belief we mean is not something you do with your mind, or your imagination – it is something that consumes and occupies your whole being. It is not a lifestyle, it is not a choice, it is not a philosophy.

When I read the comments on social media from the people who think that they have struck a blow for freedom by opening a cinema on the Lord’s day, I feel sorry. It is sad that they think so little of their community that they would triumph over their friends and neighbours in such a way.

I am not sorry, however, because they have spoilt things for me; they haven’t and they can’t. My source of joy is immutable and unshakeable. Nor do my feelings stem from thinking I am superior to them; for I know I am not.

In truth, I know better than them, because one of the things that separates us is the fact that, while I have been in their position, they have not experienced mine. Not yet, that is. For now, I have the advantage, but no desire to preserve it.

Meantime, perhaps their little victory with the film is not so pyrrhic after all. It has moved more people than ever before to pray for the unbelievers in our midst.

And the Christians here in Lewis have no desire to impose, or prevent, or bully. If Sunday consumerism is what people think they want, so be it: no one can stop us praying for a change of heart.

May The Force Be With Us (The Real One, That Is)

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So, the newshounds  have finally caught up with An Lanntair’s plans to open one Sunday each month. It is a big deal for them, and for those people living in Lewis who don’t like the island very much the way it is. For the media, it is an excuse to point the quaint, wee island out to mainland sophisticates, so they can laugh at our eccentric ways. Somewhere, right now, I guarantee you, a ‘journalist’ is writing copy that contains the words, ‘they’ve only recently been allowed to hang their washing out on Sunday’.

People outside of Lewis love this. To them, we are hilarious anachronisms in black clothes. The only modern thing about us is the microchip implanted in our heads, controlled by the minister from his study computer. Him and his big, fluffy, white cat.

We are other. And we always have been. It makes us fair game.

Here, I’ll empty out the sack of cliches, and you can write the headlines yourselves – just pick and mix. Strictly Sabbatarian. Narrowly Presbyterian. Deeply Religious. Chained-up swings. Swimming prohibited. Wee Frees. Disapproval. Opposition. Planes. Ferries.

You know, the usual sort of thing. Journalists are after a couple of hundred easy words, so I suppose it’s no wonder they resort to rummaging in the stereotype bin. Tomorrow, they will be casually ripping into someone else’s community.

The people I really don’t understand are the ones who live here in the island. I get that they want to make it like everywhere else; no one can punish them for the fact that they apparently lack any feeling for the uniqueness of the place. We have a saying in Gaelic, ‘an rud nach d’ fhuair Niall, chan iarrar air e’. Similar, I suppose to the English: what would you expect from a horse, but a kick?

But do they never stop, in their endless, whining, ‘but I waaaaant’, to think about why Lewis has not ‘caught-up’ with the rest of the country? Could it possibly be because Lewis did not need to be like other places, having enough of its own character to stand apart?

However, the decision is made. The cinema will open one Sunday a month. To begin with. And then the gallery, the cafe, the shop. Will that be enough for our restless secularists who apparently can’t be alone with their families even one day a week? Of course not. Already they are talking about the swimming pool. Then it will be buses, shops, supermarkets . . .

Then, though? Then, they will be satisfied?

Not even then. Discontentment like theirs knows no end. That’s why they are building themselves this house of cards – they think, ‘one more blow against the Lord’s Day and we will be happy; one more victory over Christ and we will have Him beaten’.

They expect opposition from the church. No – correction – they want opposition from the church. It entitles them to rail against religious privilege, if anyone representing an island church raises even one objection to this latest ‘development’.

Well, they won’t get it. The time for that is long past. They are using their God-given free will to spend their time as they choose. Nothing I or anyone else can say will change that. Already, they know that it’s wrong to keep none of it back in tribute to Him. Oh, they’ll deny it. But they know.

It is called the Lord’s Day, not because He commands us to spend it in chains, bored, and reading the Bible without understanding.
He wants us to fulfil our purpose, which is twofold: to glorify Him, and to enjoy Him.

This is not the language of bondage, but of freedom. God wants us to choose to spend time in His presence – He doesn’t compel, or command; and He will not drag you to Himself kicking and screaming.

Though, one day, you may wish He had.

And, even though this step has been taken, it does not mean the atheists have won. They are not victorious in any sense that I can envy. I can say that even though the auditorium will be full on the first open Sunday, because every ticket has already been sold.

It was calculated that way. Some savvy person knew that these superior beings who will not allow their children to be duped by fairytales from the Middle East, would like nothing better than a Sunday afternoon watching aliens and spaceships.

Harmless escapism? I suppose that all depends on what you’re fleeing from.

Meantime, we Christians will be invoking that much talked-about religious privilege. We only have the one, but it really is all we need. ‘The force’, you might call it.

It is our privilege to pray for those who will not pray for themselves. We pray that their eyes will be opened to the folly of what they’re doing; we pray that they will get a heart of wisdom.

Closed minds and deaf ears will not hear our protests; but God is waiting for our petitions. Not – lest they wilfully misunderstand and take offence – petitions that He should smite them, nor anything of that nature. This isn’t Star Wars, you know.

No. Prayers that they will see Him as He really is. And that they will take hold of that for themselves. This is not about power, or imposing a Sabbatarian lifestyle on others.

For the Christian, this is much more important than lifestyle – it is about life. We would have everyone choose that themselves.