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Christian or Psychopath?

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There were times during the recent Stornoway Trust election when I might have voluntarily asked to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act, just to get out of it. Or the Crofting Act of 1886, for that matter. Only, that wouldn’t really have been a section, more of an apportionment . . .

Anyway, I wasn’t sectioned, despite my frequent exposure to the excesses of other people. But it was what we are pleased to call a steep learning curve. Very, very steep.

God sets us on little journeys, I believe, in order that we might learn and grow spiritually. If I really think about it, I have grown more, and grown closer to Him, in the times of adversity than in the times of prosperity. The former have, as the Bible says, led me to consider. I didn’t want them, but I did profit from them.

During the campaign, I knew that I would suffer a spiritual onslaught. The devil uses every means at his disposal when he’s on the ropes. He will spit poison at you until you think you can take no more.

And, make no mistake – you can’t. God can, though, and does. You have to stick close to Him, and never try to do anything on your own.

I was caught a little off guard on Sunday. Some strangers who, according to themselves, believe all aspects of my life are fair game simply because I’ve written about them, took up a very painful topic in unimaginably callous style. Because I’m a Christian, I am apparently not supposed to grieve Donnie’s death. My husband. The man I intended to spend my life with.

Which got me thinking about that perennial problem – the misconception about what being a Christian is. Apparently, this woman (who I have never met) feels that I should be happy he’s dead. Yes, read that again slowly. This person, a member of the human race, has dehumanised me sufficiently in her own mind to write such an extraordinarily stupid thing. What she is describing is not a Christian, but a psychopath.

Unrepentant, despite me questioning the mindset of anyone who would write such a thing, she went on to justify her actions. I have blogged about Donnie, so I can’t complain if she feels the need to stamp all over his memory, despite knowing neither of us. Or, rather, because she knew neither of us.

I am less than human to her – because I am an online Christian, presumably.

But I am human, with a family and feelings, and a heart that felt her words like a knife.

Last Sunday, reading the horrible, callous words that she had written, I was crying and shaking. I felt sick that anyone would sink so low. My first instinct was to hide away, to stay at home and weep.

But I needed to go among my own people, where I feel safe. So I made the effort. And I told someone what had happened – a kind man, one of our elders, charged with the spiritual oversight of the congregation (as well as election-rigging, obviously). He looked pained. His reaction mirrored my own: disbelief at the callousness.

The prayer restored me. Being with His people revived me. Everything returned to its proper order. And then I began to feel pity for this woman’s ignorance of Christ. No one who knows the Jesus who wept with the family of Lazarus could think a Christian forfeits the right to mourn. So, when I got home that night, I prayed for her.

It cost me a lot to do it. I despised her for the way she made me feel, for the upset to my mother, to my sister, to my friends. Left to myself, I would have driven to her house and let her know that I am not just an online caricature for her and her friends to denigrate.

But I am not left to myself, thank God. And so I brought her before Him, where I leave her.

I hope she understands one day that my tender writing about the man I shared my life with was never intended as a sacrifice to her, or her kind. My identity as a widow is God-given; my faith leads me to believe that He wants me to inhabit that identity for the good of others, as well as myself.

Those who justify their godless and inhuman trampling on the feelings of others need pity much more than I. In recent weeks, I have seen for myself how very, very low the human condition can sink when it removes itself from God. I had not thought to see it on my own doorstep.

Pray for them. There but for the grace of God go any of us. They cannot save themselves, and they will not ask His help.

He expects this much of us. That is what a Christian is: someone who has feelings, yes, but lays them aside in obedience to His greater love. And His love, like many other things, can only truly be understood from the inside.

The Savour of Life . . . Or Death?

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Coming up to the anniversary of Donnie’s death this week, I worried. You see, I’ve learned that you never quite know how you’re going to be. It is almost as though you are watching another person, because you have zero control over your own feelings in this regard.

Nonetheless, you gather yourself inwards, tentatively approaching the dread day on metaphorical tiptoes. I suppose, three years on, I am afraid of waking the sleeping beast of grief.

Sunday was wonderful. I had missed the midweek service because of another meeting. And I felt its absence, limping towards the weekend. So, Sunday and my church family received me into their warm embrace. Preaching, praise, prayer and fellowship somewhere you can just be yourself is not to be beaten. It poured strength into me, reminding me who He is.

And, when Tuesday came, I awoke, feeling . . . fine. Better than fine. Time with Himself, a stroll with the dog, and I was chilled out. There were messages of care and love and prayer – many from people who had never known Donnie but who have become important in my life since then.

Just as He has done three years ago, God surrounded me with His peace. For that day, I could read the barrage of nastiness about me online and not be troubled. Not be troubled for myself, at any rate. The people making snide remarks struck me as rather sad, forlorn figures. What kind of person hates someone they’ve never met to that degree? I felt sorry for them.

But I’m ashamed to admit that the feeling of pity did not last. You can only hold yourself taut for so long and, by the time I went to bed, my heart felt so full of resentment I thought it might splinter.

‘Even today’, I complained to God, ‘they couldn’t leave me alone’.

I have learned to live with the fact that I am despised for being a Christian; I have learned not to be bothered by the casual lies they tell about me. This is not actually about me anyway – I could be their darling tomorrow if I denied Christ. He is the unpopular one, not me. These days, I am reviled for His sake, just as He was reviled for mine.

And there the comparison ends.

He bore His infinitely greater suffering with perfect fortitude. I simply ended up feeling sorry for myself.

On Wednesday morning, I stomped about the house, and went to work in the worst of humours. It was a culmination of things: too much coffee, too little sleep, too much holding it together on my own inadequate strength, and not enough time pouring out my heart to God. At one point, I told my sister that the day was bound to end with me hitting someone – anyone – or bursting into tears.

The day, in fact, ended in laughter and in gratitude.

What effected this miraculous transformation? Not ‘what’ – who? And I think you already know the answer.

First of all, there are friends. The friends God puts in your path are not necessarily those you would expect. Sometimes, the world might look askance at these relationships, and even wonder what you could possibly have in common. But I found the value of those God-honouring friendships right then. While I was seething through my day, these friends were, it transpired, worrying for me.

And, if you’re not a Christian, you may be thinking, ‘that’s nice – but hardly remarkable’.

Wrong. It is extraordinary in the truest sense of the word. Christian concern goes heavenwards. These friends, in their anxiety for me, were bringing me before God. In being on their hearts, I was also on His.

That is not nothing.

In their safe company, I unwound. The venom of poor, misguided people lost its sting. I remembered who I was because these friends showed me what I should be.

And we laughed. Mainly at each other. Together, as well, we reflected on the meaning of integrity, which is really  about being straight before God.

It doesn’t matter what those who are wise in their own sight think of me. They have started off from the false premise that there is no God, and so all the working out from then on is bound to be erroneous.

This is not about them, though. They have taken enough of this week from me.

Actually, this blog is not a blog at all, but a love song – to the Lord, and to His people. It is a thanksgiving.

God moves the hearts of His people to small acts of love. It was they, through Him, who soothed my brittleness this week. In the unexpected heat of this election campaign, a little  band of us have supported one another. Each day, we begin by sharing a reading; and each night, we smooth the cares of the day with a song of praise.

And, there are the messages. One person sent me assurance of their prayers, accompanied by the loveliest sound clip of psalm singing from our church. Ladies I haven’t seen in years, but who knew my parents, sending me word of their solidarity. It is worth so much more than I can ever express.

Then there are the strangers. Not the hate-filled people who abuse my good name for what I believe; not the faux-reasonable secuularists who wish I would just disappear and shut my face about who Christ is.

No, the other kind of stranger. People I have never met, but who are my brothers and sisters because they too have known God’s grace. So, so many of them have reached out and blessed me by doing so.

How can the same words cause some to bitterly hate, and others to brim with love? That, I think, is a question for the unbelievers. God, help them.

 

 

Forgetting the Sabbath Day

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Last weekend, I had to confront the idea that perhaps my teaching ability is not, as the Americans say, ‘all that’, when we had a quiz about Moses in Sunday School. Asked which two foods the Israelites had enjoyed in the wilderness, one team confidently wrote, ‘pigeons and napalm’.

Ah, yes, the diet of champions.

However, they did exceptionally well on the Ten Commandments, both teams recalling nine correctly.

They each listed the same nine. And they each missed out the same one.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

We joked afterwards amongst ourselves that we must be terrible teachers if none of the children remembered the fundamental rule of our faith. You would think, we said, sitting in a Sunday School, discussing the commandments, that’s the one they WOULD remember.

But, then, reflecting upon it afterwards,
I thought that maybe the kids had demonstrated something very valuable. Christ has told us we must be as childlike as them in our faith and in this, as in so many other of His teachings, I have not paid enough heed.

After all, there in our classroom, talking about the things of God, praying and singing Psalms of praise, and enjoying one another’s company, were we not living the very essence of the missing commandment? Was it necessary to remember the words when we were doing what they asked?

It actually crystallised for me where we are at locally with ‘the Sunday issue’. I have come to despise the word, ‘Sabbatarian’, which is invariably used pejoratively. It is not we Christians who believe that keeping the Sabbath is the fundamental tenet of our faith, but those who wilfully misunderstand what we are all about.

In fact, what we are – or should be – all about is John 3:16. Christ is the centre of our faith. We should be showing people Him, His perfect love and, yes, His authority.

I was not a Sabbath-keeper until I loved Christ. Even now, I am an imperfect keeper of the Sabbath by any human standard. But I love Him unwaveringly. And though my neighbours might judge me as falling far short because of my outward conduct, that is not how He operates.

My involvement, through this blog, and on social media more generally, in speaking up for the traditional Hebridean Sunday, has caused no end of misunderstanding. There have been times when I do not recognise myself from the descriptions of others. Surely, as I remarked to friends this week, that’s Ian Paisley they’re talking about.

Or, perhaps I have fallen into the same communication trap as the late Reverend. Have I been substituting noise and repetition for clarity? When I should be telling folk of quail and manna, are they just getting pigeons and napalm?

I know that there is a prevailing view among some in the online community that I am a hardliner. Sssshhhh. If you listen very carefully, you can almost hear the Free Church fathers laughing.

Right now, because there’s an election going on, there are efforts being made to portray some candidates – myself among them – as single-issue Sabbatarians.

Not only am I not a single-issue Sabbatarian, I am not a Sabbatarian at all. Certainly not the way the secularist lobby means it. And I would be very surprised indeed if any of my fellow Christian candidates see themselves as such.

As I said in the previous blog, I observe Sunday as a day of worship and devotion because I love the Lord. Before that, I appreciated a quiet Sunday because I loved and respected my heritage as an islander.

Different working-out; same answer.

It is not the day itself which matters, but people. God made the Sabbath for man, not the converse. He did it intentionally, though – and God’s intention always comes back to the one thing: the benefit of our souls.

Our souls are in need of rest and refreshing. Without Him, we try to find ways of achieving this. I know, because I speak from experience. Reading. Walking. Films. Time with friends. Sleep. And then, always that Sunday evening realisation that another week of work is about to begin and there will be no rest for five days.

With Him, though, it is different. There is no need for me to achieve that rest and refreshing because I receive it from, and in, Him. Constantly, though – every day. It is a well that never runs dry.

I am grateful for that every day and never more so than this week. It has been a time of cumulative stresses – a very intense situation at work; the inevitable (and increasingly creative) online abuse; and in the background, the knowledge that, three years ago this coming Tuesday, I was sitting by my husband’s bedside, watching his life draw to a close.

But I am a very blessed woman. None of these burdens are mine to carry alone. Every pressure and pain brings Him closer and, if He doesn’t come Himself, He sends others. His peace springs up from within to water the driest days.

And His commandments are no longer written on tablets of stone, but the heart of flesh He has given me.

 

Not to be Read by Unbelievers

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We were all gathered together in the church hall, when the minister picked up the microphone, fixed us with his most intimidating gaze, and asked, ‘who reads the Bible on an electronic device?’

There was an awkward silence. People tried to avoid his eye. I sat, rooted to the spot in terror, thinking, ‘so this is how it ends’. In my paranoia, I even wondered whether he would be able to tell me for a Kindle-user, just by looking. ‘Put up your hands if you have the Bible on an electronic device’, he ordered in his most threateningly reasonable tone. Still, no one moved. None dared.

And then it happened. A miracle. In the finest ever ‘I’m Spartacus’ move, his wife raised her hand. The whole atmosphere changed in an instant, and suddenly hands were in the air all over the room.

I held my breath. What would happen? Surely this show of defiance could not go unpunished. Yet, what could he do when his own wife had openly admitted to using modern technology herself?

Finally, he spoke.

‘I see’, was all he said.

And then I also saw. Sitting there, with a wireless microphone in his hand, he could hardly castigate his congregation for indulging in the odd Bible app. Especially when his own household was patently guilty of making forays into the modern age.

I wondered whether this was history in the making, a momentous event that would be recorded forever as the night the Wee Frees in Stornoway were finally forced into the 21st century.

But then I remembered – no, of course, that could not be. It had already happened . . . sometime around the end of 1999, I think.

However, it is important to be fair. People cannot help conceiving ill-informed ideas about an organisation that is secretive, and a closed shop. Besides, if it seeks to exercise power and control over an entire community, surely its leadership could be more transparent, less misogynistic,kinder, less controlling . . .

That same day, the membership had been told not to read anything written by me, and not to show anything written by me to others. The decree was issued online with no right of reply, and with an Orwelllian postscript that it would be removed from view in due course.

Who did this, you ask – the Moderator, surely would be the only one with that level of power. Or maybe the Presbytery – was it them? Surely no individual minister would be so egomaniacal as to exert his authority in this way . . .

Oh, you mistake me; I’m not talking about the Free Church. My local elder used to visit the house once a month to check the contents of my bookcase, right enough, but they’ve reduced the visits now to three-monthly. I cunningly hid all my offensively heretical books behind the Diary of Kenneth MacRae and Leabhar Aithghearr nan Ceist, which seemed to satisfy him.

No, it isn’t the Free Church telling its members what to read and what not to read. The organisation which seeks to ban certain writers, and to control what its membership looks at online is not the repressive Wee Frees; it’s the tolerant, welcoming people ‘of all faiths and none’ Western Isles Secular Society.

Yes, like a tinpot dictator, one of their administrators has prohibited my blog from being read by WISS members, or shared to the group.

The reason, of course, is that the last time it was dragged back there, the unruly hordes picked over it and in a frenzy of hatred, unwittingly revealed their true colours.

I was variously described as ‘disgusting’, ‘rude’, ‘racist’, ‘spiritually immature’, a ‘zealot’, ‘an embarrassment to the fellowship of the church’, and an egomaniac in pursuit of martyrdom.

Officially, they must not read it, speak about it or do so much as coimhead an taobh a tha mi because I am an intransigent troll.

But, in reality, they must not read it because there’s a danger in being exposed to the truth. Some things are only recognised as broken when they are held up against the light.So, it is safer to preserve them in darkness.

The secularist response to that blog has made me pity them more than ever. Though they hissed and spat, and even tried to use Scripture against me, it isn’t me they fear at all; it’s Christ.

He is so inconvenient, shaking the foundations of their fictional world. And because they don’t want Him, they attack any who try to speak about who He is and what He’s done. They won’t silence Him, though. If Christ intends that any or all of that Society should hear Him and bend the knee, then hear Him and bend the knee they shall.

It shouldn’t surprise me that the Western Isles secularists have obeyed this edict not to read my work; these are the same people who want their own children ‘protected’ from the Bible because it doesn’t tally with their world view. If they are prepared to attempt silencing the voice of God, I can hardly expect special treatment.

Let me not, though, hear any further suggestions that they are the voice of reason and tolerance, over against the oppression and control of the Free Church.

One has afforded me a voice; one has silenced me. The leaders of one have encouraged me to think for myself; the leaders of the other have suggested that I am incapable of such a thing.

They don’t want Truth. Pilate asked what it was, even as it stood before Him; they are not prepared to risk Christ getting that close.

One day, I hope they’ll be grateful that it was never up to them.

 

 

 

 

Coming Out of the Wilderness

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Among the many things we don’t do in the Free Church – joy, love, peace, freedom, feminism – apparently we are not much into marking Easter either. So I’m told.

We don’t festoon the church with fluffy chicks, or put bunny ears on the elders; and we don’t exit the church en masse to roll eggs down the staran after the Easter Sunday service. The Wee Frees, you would think, are the ideal denomination for an Easter bonnet competition but, well, they’d all look sort of the same, wouldn’t they – black and devoid of fol-de-rols?

Of course, we do mark Easter, in the sense that we have hung onto the heart of it. Next weekend, in Stornoway, we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper – it is a sacrament, dispensed for remembrance of His death, and so that those who believe in Him will meditate upon the benefits they have derived from His sacrifice and, based on that, reaffirm their commitment to Him and the debt they owe.

When, at the beginning of the Supper, the presiding minister utters the words, ‘On the night that He was betrayed . . .’ I shiver. Nowhere else, in no other context could these words be both an accusation of guilt and a proclamation of freedom to the same person. But because Christ died and rose again for us, for the unworthy, we feel both the guilt of His crucifixion, and the freedom in His resurrection.

In other faith traditions, the period of Lent – beginning on February 14th this year, and ending on March 29th – will be observed. My first encounter with it was in school when a classmate from Barra was eating blocks of jelly during our morning interval. I asked her why and she told me that she had given up sweets for Lent. Being teenagers, none of us had much idea of what self-sacrifice was, and the jelly was a good substitute for her, while she technically kept her Lenten vow.

But I’m more than twenty years older now and I still have the same problem with dying to self that my jelly-eating school friend did. As a Christian, I should be working harder to subdue the inner voice that shouts, ‘what about me?’

Recently, I have been subject to some criticism for my beliefs. My last blog touched something of a nerve and the unbelieving community in Lewis, alongside a few professing adherents, were outraged by what I said. Well, no, sorry, let me rephrase that. They were outraged by what I am; no one actually critiqued the writing, unless you consider words like ‘disgusting’ and ‘rude’ a critique (I don’t).

The slurs are mainly inaccurate, but I am not going to bore you with that here. One very kind Christian lady whom I have not yet met, messaged me to point out that people who resort to personal attack when they have never met you, are merely highlighting the fact that they are spiritually bereft. Comments on my personality, lack of Christlikeness (how true), lack of manners . . . well, they are meaningless when they come from strangers.

Some of the arrows hit home, however, as they will do. This is a vulnerable time of year for me. I don’t say that to garner sympathy, nor to claim that I am a victim – I am not and never have been that. But I do make myself suffer. For a little while, I dwelt on the fact that there was no Donnie to make it better; I wallowed in self-pity and the memories of three years ago, when our time was running out. When the going gets tough, I often retreat into that kind of self-harm, picking at the wound, and making everything seem much blacker.

This is Lent. And Donnie’s last weeks were Lent. It is representative of forty days spent by Christ in the wilderness, preparing for ministry and resisting the Devil.

I decided last Saturday that I was going to stop blogging. Or, at least, that I was going to stop commenting on the activities of unbelievers in my own immediate vicinity. When you are alone, and feeling sorry for yourself, you can easily believe the liars. They themselves are speaking, of course, for the great liar. He seems to be fond of hanging about the wilderness.

But I don’t choose to linger there with him; and I am not alone. If the Lord doesn’t come Himself, He sends His people with encouragement and prayer. And His own Word, so full of peace and strengthening – Psalm 31, Isaiah 43 . . . and my own mantra, if a Wee Free can be allowed such a thing: ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid’?

Lent for many who observe it is a pilgrimage. It should bring us, finally, to the very foot of the cross. My journey, three years ago, brought me to rest there, in Him.

On Sunday night, I was powerfully reminded of that once more. Tempted though I had been to find a solution in myself to this latest problem, the preaching reminded me that challenging situations should not be met by doing, but by being.

Your identity, once found in Christ, remains there. He keeps you safe in His hand. Gradually, He takes you, leaning upon Himself, up out of the wilderness. If I am tempted again by the Devil to take refuge in the past, to dwell on my loss and my human frailty; or if I am slandered and inclined to be affronted, I should remember what follows Lent.

At the foot of the cross, and again at the empty tomb, we remember who He is, and who He has made us. No person, no words, no circumstance can ever undo the finished work of Christ.

 

Building Bridges to Nowhere, Sheltering Trolls.

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Not far from my home in Tolsta is the famous ‘bridge to nowhere’, an incongruous monument to Lord Leverhulme’s progressive plans to develop this island. The improbably elegant bridge sits between moor and machair, never having performed the function for which it was originally intended – linking two communities divided by miles of untamed wilderness.

Leverhulme thought that his ideas for Lewis were going to bring prosperity and ease of life for a people who had just come through the Great War and suffered the unimaginable tragedy of the ‘Iolaire’, only to be forgotten by the government which had promised homes fit for heroes. The new landlord was filled with philantrophic design, planning to give these hard-pressed people a shiny, modern island.

But they didn’t want his ideas. They didn’t agree with his vision of progress. All they wanted was what they were used to – crofting and the traditional life with which they had grown up. Eventually, Leverhulme understood that he was beaten and retired from the scene with good grace.

Scroll back a few centuries, to 1598, when King James VI high-handedly granted ownership of Lewis by Crown Charter to a group of gentlemen from Fife. The plan was that they would colonise and thereby civilize the island, and the islanders. They would bring in the culture of the outside world and the local barbarians would be forced to conform.

The local barbarians were not in favour of this plan. They razed the new settlement to the ground and forced the interlopers out. King James was outraged and denounced the people of Lewis as ignorant and barbaric.

Well, perhaps they were, but they knew that no one should be able to tell them what to do with their birthright. Centuries of doing things their own way, including the glory days of Tighearnas nan Eilean, the mediaeval Lordship of the Isles, had left them with no appetite to see their cultural heritage further dismantled by the Scottish king or anyone else so wholly ignorant of the Gaelic world and its ways.

Leverhulme gave up when he knew he was beaten; the Fife Adventurers had to be driven away, but both have something in common. They approached Lewis with a mind to ‘improve’ it, giving no thought to whether their idea of progress concurred with that of the people.

Cultural imperialism, they call it. When the representatives of the dominant culture tell those of the minority one that their views do not count, that they are imagining threat where it does not exist, that their interpretation of their own identity is mistaken . . . what else are we to call it?

And yes, I am talking about what is happening in Lewis right now. It needs saying again and again, because I just don’t think it has been taken seriously enough.

Some people in our community believe this is just a wee spat on the internet – the likes of me stupidly debating with trolling secularists who don’t even live in Lewis. There is a creeping, insidious – and let’s call a spade exactly what it is – lying narrative being used by people who call themselves ‘ secularists’ but are actually just negative and bitter enemies of Christ.

They tell us Lewis is centuries behind everywhere else, that we have been duped by a power-hungry church and, like the sheep we are, have followed blindly wherever the ministers have wanted to take us.

It offends me beyond words that anyone thinks that this is acceptable, or that it should go unchallenged.

Christianity does not consist of staying silent when God is maligned by ignorant people; it consists of offering them the truth, that they might have the same chance of being corrected that we were blessed to get. Oh, they will call you names for it. They will say that you too are ignorant, narrow-minded – closed-minded, even. Your intelligence and your integrity will be called into question.

One of them almost silenced me recently by calling me ‘publicly pious’. It would be a deliciously apt way for an unbeliever to shut my mouth, wouldn’t it? By making me believe that my witness is nothing more than Pharisaic.

My silence is what would make me a Pharisee, however. If I opted to remain quiet now, I would be caring more for what my reputation is before men; and I wouldn’t half seem like the ideal meek, quiet Christian – the kind the unbelievers want.

They would love us to be quiet and stand aside; they want us to be ashamed of who we are. Most ludicrous of all, they will have you to believe that they are reasonable, seeking ‘compromise’. You know, that thing where I want the door closed, you want it ajar, so we compromise and have it half-open.

I am not justifying myself to them. They have their opinion of me, which is neither here nor there. But I do have some concern for what other Christians make of everything that is going on. And them I do owe some kind of explanation as to why so much of my writing lately has been on this theme.

This is not a war of words only. Nor is it just happening online – it is having negative and divisive consequences for this community. Our Saviour and His church are being maligned. We, His followers, expect abuse for His sake. But that does not mean we allow lies about who we are in Him to go unchallenged, in case those lies should become a stumbling-block to any as yet outside.

The secularist manifesto in Lewis suggests that they are about unity and progress, while the church is about power and control of the 19th century kind. All I am saying is beware, because theirs is exactly the kind of bridge that leads to nowhere.

And, if I’m not mistaken, it shelters the very worst kind of troll.

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.

 

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?’