love

God is love, but don’t take it from me

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They say that more people are turning to God since the world began to ramp up its uncertainty. I hope that’s true. He is certainly talked about more on social media platforms now than at any time I can remember. Of course, though, that also means placing his name where some people can throw rocks at it – and they do.

I can completely understand why an unbeliever would say that they cannot reconcile belief in God with the maelstrom that seems to be breaking loose around us every day. Many live in perpetual war zones, their homes torn apart by conflict not of their making. There are countless displaced people, just existing as best they can. And, even besides the theatre of warfare, there are quietly terrifying dramas played out in every corner of the Earth. Families sit by the hospital beds of sick children; unwanted diagnoses are issued to men and women who still have life they want to go on living; and healthy people face the torture of watching those they love suffer.

I fully understand that this seems contrary to the idea of a benign power who loves us, regardless of what we are. And I don’t have the words to tell anyone that they are wrong. Who am I, who is any Christian, to take that task on? 

All I would say is this: get to know him yourself. Don’t take anyone else’s word for who God is; but please don’t dismiss him because you’re in pain. If you want to confront him with the reality of your suffering and ask him where his love is in that . . . do it.

I have done it. In the searing, raw moments of my grief at losing a beloved husband so young, I cried to God. It seemed hollow to me to sit in church and hear that I am the apple of his eye, that my name is written upon his palms, only to return home to a house empty of the man I always believed that same God had joined me to. In these hard, lonely hours, I was like Naomi, asking to be called Mara in my self-pity.

These comfortless seasons sometimes lasted for days, but not days and days. I can’t give anyone the formula for restoration to trusting God, because I don’t think there is one in these circumstances. You have to simply sit with him, and show him your heart – but, in return, you have to listen while he reveals his. Every time I have accused him in my bitterness, he answers me as soon as I open my ears to what I already know.

God is love. We think we invented it, but we only claimed it as our own, remaking an inferior version as best we could in our own image. And human love can be beautiful, whether it is between parent and child, between a man and a woman, between siblings or friends – even the love we can have for our pets. It has inspired countless poems, songs, novels, films, paintings, opera . . . and yet that kind of love, however attractive, is a pale imitation of the original.

God loves us because God is love. We question this because we really only know the fickle, human brand of love, which is rarely as unconditional as we would like. In our blinkered state, we judge the quality of God’s love by what we think we are due, and what we want.

His perfect love doesn’t always give us what we want. I didn’t want my husband to die, but he did. That wasn’t cruelty on the part of God because he is incapable of cruelty. It is sometimes a difficult pill to swallow for me, but in an enduring way, I know that this is part of a greater plan. Hard though this can be, it is made possible because I know God, and to know him is to trust him implicitly. Even if that trust sometimes falters into recrimination when I feel a stab of pain at my loss, in the end I always remember who God is.

God is love. We cannot understand that through any means but being with him. I cannot make you feel it, and vice-versa, no matter how many words we waste. No minister or priest can convince you of God’s love; no lecturer or textbook can QED you into believing it in your heart.

Only God’s heart can do that through a direct connection with yours. I can tell you so much about the reason for the hope that is in me, but why take my word for it?

We love only because he first loved us. That still wasn’t enough for mankind, but then God so loved the world that he gave his only son that we would not die, but have everlasting life.

He so loved the world, so loves you, that he inflicted terrible suffering, even death, upon himself. 

Our names are not merely written on his palms, but carved into them. He endured hell for our sakes, out of love. When we know this, our own sorrows are a little easier to bear.  

Out of the depths, o Lord

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The news that Charlie Kirk had been shot, and the subsequent update that the injury was fatal, cast a gloom over much of the western world on Wednesday night. Like many, I prayed that he would survive, but it was not to be.

So, did the God in whom he so unswervingly believed fail Charlie? That is what the crowing mobs – and, sickeningly, yes, there are such people – would tell you. They are always there, in every disappointment, every terminal diagnosis, every loss, every bereavement, jabbing their fingers and asking, ‘where is your God now’?

He is closer to the broken hearted than any atheist would believe. Indeed, closer than any Christian who has not yet been broken can comprehend. The late Queen, quoting indirectly from Dr Colin Murray Parkes, famously said that ‘grief is the price we pay for love , but I would add – from my own experience, no less – that God’s comfort is the dividend of faith. I have no doubt that the believing family and friends of Charlie Kirk are experiencing that God, and that comfort more viscerally now than ever in their lives before.

‘Pain’, said CS Lewis, ‘is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world’, and so maybe this personal, human tragedy for Charlie’s family should be regarded as a wake-up call to the rest of us. The political responses have been predictable: hunt down the person responsible and deal with him as punitively as the law allows; suppress the far left: in short, meet violence and lack of understanding with more violence and lack of understanding.

This is not the way. Any hopelessness that I feel in the face of this tragedy does not stem from a questioning of God, but of the depressingly unchanging way in which people are responding. Yes, it may be possible to locate the gunman . . . and then what? Does dealing with what may be an act of unwarranted inhumanity from someone ideologically opposed to Charlie Kirk end the problem? Of course it does not. The world’s way, as we are seeing daily, is to meet brutality with brutality. We talk more than ever before about understanding, about kindness, and about walking a mile in the other guy’s shoes – but I don’t think this world has ever contained less comprehension of love than it does at this moment.

There is, of course, a way through; there is always a way through if we are prepared to humble ourselves. Therein lies the rub, however. We have made gods of ourselves, of our desires, of our feelings. Nothing must be allowed to hurt me, or even contradict me. If you doubt my word, or dare to pose a counterargument, you are not merely disagreeing, but hating. In their populist stupidity, successive governments have tried to legislate for petted lips, for offended sensibilities, and now stand amidst the wreckage, wondering who to blame.

Blame us, then, the creatures who have tried in vain to usurp our Creator. We did this. Our relentless pursuit of power and glory has wreaked interminable havoc. Ultimately, we tried to run this world on a rogue operating system, having tried every which way to disable the pre-installed software. And we have catastrophically failed.

That, atheists, is why people die in pointless wars and human conflict, and why every day is peppered with innumerable acts of cruelty and depravity, inflicted on one set of human beings by another. It is the reason why, no matter how well-intentioned we think we are, nothing goes to plan. And when – if – the person whose bullet killed Charlie Kirk is found, we still won’t be satisfied. Don’t look for justice in a world that no longer recognises truth, that no longer cares whether a person or an act is good or evil, as long as it aligns with their own world view. We, each of us, think of ourselves as the plumbline for everything: does it sit true against my ideology? No? Ah well, it must be wrong.

This is no nihilistic assessment of world affairs. It is a call, not to arms, but to peace. I was so moved by the words of Pope Leo (yes, Proddies, him again) earlier in the week in describing the role of tears in situations such as this one. Weeping is not a sign of weakness, but of strength; Christ cried out on the cross to his Father, and that type of anguished plea can be understood, the Pontiff said, ‘as an extreme form of prayer’.

Sometimes, love has no other outlet than to shed tears. I think we have now reached that point as a world. Cry, then, from the depth of your hearts, to the God of all comfort, because he understand us – better, even, I think – without words. 

How can I hand you over?

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Christina Rossetti’s poem, ‘Remember’ has a particular resonance for me. It asks that she be remembered after her death, when ‘you can no more hold me by the hand, nor I half turn to go, yet turning, stay’. These lines came back to me when my husband was dying, because they reminded me of a particular weekend when he had to leave home on Sunday instead of Monday, in order to attend some work training. We had been having such a lovely weekend, and both of us were sad that it needed to end that much sooner. I was trying to put a brave face on it, when he suddenly took off his jacket, chucked his bag back into the wardrobe and decided not to go after all till the following morning.

I remembered this so many times as I sat by his bedside in the hospice. And I remembered Rossetti’s sentiment – that death revokes the option to remain. How I wished he could hug me as he had that Sunday, and tell me he was staying.

It came back powerfully to me again this morning in church. 

God restrained his own hand many times against the Israelites, never permitting them quite to suffer the fate they deserved. In the prophecy of Hosea, he asked himself, ‘How can I hand you over, Israel’? Yet, in the preceding verses, we see countless reasons for him to do just that, given the unfaithfulness of those who called him ‘God Most High’. Even though their words were not matched by their deeds, still God resisted giving them over to destruction. Such was his love for his own people that he was not willing that any should perish, and he has repeatedly held us away from death since.

But not his own Son. Jesus was not spared any of our punishment. The guilt was ours, yet the suffering was all on him. 

This is love. It is incomprehensible to our small minds but my word, it should leave a colossal mark on our hearts. God couldn’t bear to punish his sinful, disloyal people for their own dark deeds; but he willingly gave up his Son to that death on the cross, to the stark moment when he cried out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’? 

We cannot know the mind of God, but it’s incredible to imagine the Father doing to Jesus what he would not do to us. And it is equally astonishing to think of Jesus, walking to Calvary and to death . . . and not turning back from it as any one of us would, given the chance.

Today’s sermon ended with the minister reading some testimony from a Pakistani Christian who – like many of his countrymen – has been disowned by family for converting away from their faith. Yet, he said, the empty home and the silent telephone are not reasons to pity him, because he knows that God has something far better for him, and there is no loneliness in Christ.

I can put my ‘amen’ to that, except in one respect. The awe I feel at this man’s sacrifice, is because it reflects God. Neither God the Father, nor the Son, spared himself in redeeming us. Painful, soul-searing sacrifice was willingly made. Ditto this Christian whose profession made such a moving end to today’s sermon.

Any losses I have sustained were not sacrifices  willingly given. I don’t think I would have had the strength, or the faith. But, there again, God’s infinite love didn’t ask me to give what I could not: in the light of Christian understanding, therefore, even his taking away is kindness itself.

That’s the heart of God.

The Compassion of the Christ

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Today was a communion like no other. The old traditions had all been peeled away, and only the essentials remained: the bread, the wine, the table, and a gathering of God’s believing people.

It was enough.

And the words that called to mind the loneliness of Christ’s suffering could not have been more apt for such a time as this. Many of us have gone through a protracted period of aloneness over the last two years. Families and friends have been separated, people have met death without loved ones to hold their hands. I cannot imagine what it must be like to have been bereaved during the pandemic, especially in communities which normally show their support by drawing alongside those who mourn. Who could forget those images of our newly-widowed monarch, sitting quite alone in St George’s Chapel? In that moment, she symbolised the loneliness of many across the nation.

Yet, she cannot feel your grief or mine, anymore than we can experience hers. For that, there is none but Christ.

Not only is he acquainted with grief, he has borne the unimaginable loneliness of being cut off from God. He chose to take that into his own experience in order that he might obliterate it from ours. Listening to the minister today, speaking of the peculiar loneliness of the Saviour on the cross, I was reminded of Derick Thomson’s poem, in which he speaks of peeling back the Lewis sky to behold:

‘the Creator sitting in full view of His people
eating potatoes and herring,
with no man to whom He can say grace’.

No man to whom he can say grace. No man to have compassion upon him in his pain. No man he can send.

Even in my more cynical or despairing moments, when I think there is no one to whom I can turn for advice, no one I can trust . . . there is. In these two years, during which I have been much alone, I have not been lonely. There are friends, there is family – but better than any of those, there is Christ. His advice never fails, his presence never departs; he has plumbed the depths of his own loneliness and so he is the soul of compassion in ours.

We are a society in sad need of compassion. I see a strange set of parallel phenomena creeping in. The more we say, ‘be kind’, the less able we seem to be able to apply that – as Christ does – to everyone. There is a drive to stand with victims of all kinds, which is as it should be. More understanding and not less can only be a positive development. But, are we unable, or simply unwilling, to offer a second chance to people who have gone wrong? Our world sends some into the wilderness forever, guilty of unforgivable falls from grace in our eyes.

That’s not how Christ deals with anyone. It’s not how he dealt with me; it’s not the example he set his followers.

He hung on a cross and endured the ultimate loneliness, to an extent we cannot begin to understand, in order to save us. To take that legacy of love to ourselves, we have to imitate him – he has always known the very worst and darkest details of our hearts, yet never abandoned us. Accepting his gift means sharing it abroad.

Sharing it abroad, means peeling back to the essentials as symbolised in those elements today. The death of Christ accomplished our salvation, but not so that we would keep it to ourselves.

Defending My Hope

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When God decided I should emerge from my shadowy existence as a secret disciple, he must have had a plan, because he always does. Two sermons set me on the inevitable path to the Kirk Session (though they assure me that one blog – possibly even this one – will be enough to see me recalled). One, on the woman who had the issue of blood, convicted me that being healed is not enough, that we have to tell it abroad; and the second one, on the need for readiness to defend our hope in Christ. 

I have not shut up since. Compelled to defend the cause, or to share my hope, I have landed in all manner of trouble. At least part of the reason for that has been my own approach. 

In that, I am like the church as a whole. We love Christ, and in our zeal to share that with those around us, we sometimes forget that the messenger is much less apt to be shot if she considers the mode of delivery a little more carefully. 

Given that my chosen mission field was digital from the get-go, there were always going to be three principal difficulties. First of all, my audience is very mixed. On one hand there are the Christians who, for the most part, see what I’m doing and say little or nothing. Their silence may indicate approval, or the very opposite; I don’t know. On the other hand, there are the all-too-vocal unbelievers who wish I’d be quiet and keep my faith in fairy tales to myself. Secondly, online ministry of the sort I have embarked upon is lonely and prone to snap judgement from among the brethren. More traditional Christians think it folly to be engaging with atheists on social media, and some have made it clear that they see my dol a-mach as troublemaking. And thirdly, if you are using digital media for writing your views, people can misunderstand tone and intention. That’s why, I imagine, I have been variously accused of having a ‘Messiah complex’, being ‘bitter and cold’ and portraying myself as ‘the perfect, grieving widow who found God’.

You see the problem? It’s all too easy to lose people. If they dislike you, or your manner, or even just their idea of you, the psychological shutters come crashing down and you have no chance of reaching them. 

So, I have an image problem. There is an entire group of people – most of whom have never met me – entirely persuaded that I am a repellent Bible thumper, an unreasonable Sabbatarian and a smug, self-righteous hater. I must bear at least some of the responsibility for this because, without doubt, I have misrepresented my Saviour at times by being unloving and too swift to speak. If we look at any of Christ’s encounters with ordinary people in the Bible, or with leaders, for that matter, there are precious few words from him. 

We, on the other hand, seek to show him forth by jabbering endlessly. Fill the silence at all costs – isn’t that how we roll? Unfortunately, my heart is not fathomless, like the Lord’s: it is mean and brittle, and goes out only to those who are easy to love, and so much of what I think, say and write is devoid of the costly perfume that Christ pours out on me without measure. I set out to share his boundless grace, but end by keeping it meanly to myself and spilling out judgement and condemnation.

Or, at least, that’s how it seems to people who are only seeing me. There is too little of Christ in the way that I deal with unbelievers and I have, consequently, forced them to see him through the prism of me, rather than the other way around.  To say that I have misrepresented him is the understatement of the century. 

The endless words from me have been an attempt to fill the void that ought to be filled up with Christlikeness. I have to speak and write and speak some more so that the avalanche of words will persuade people that I am a Christian, and that he has begun a good work in me. Of course I believe that he has, but I shouldn’t have to say it: my life ought to be sufficient witness.

I could stand silent in the presence of doubters, as my Lord did, if I was able to reflect him back at them. For a long time, I thought I was doing that with this blog, but I am increasingly aware of speaking into darkness and being answered with silence and hardness of heart.

I think, perhaps, for a little while, it may be wise to sanctify God in my heart and ready myself to give the defence of the reason for my unquenchable hope, but only when it’s asked for. When people ask, you know that they have seen something in you without having to be told.

I have never – not once – been asked for that defence.

Because He Loved Us First

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When the bombs fell on Buckingham Palace in 1940, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother said that she was glad because it meant that she and the King could finally ‘look the East End in the eye’. Many people have laughed at this statement, believing it to be illustrative of just how out of touch the royal family is. People who had almost nothing, losing everything they owned in one night were not experiencing the same war as the privileged Windsors with their untold wealth and multiple palatial residences. If one castle gets totalled, move to another: that is not poverty.

We seem to believe that empathy can only stem from our having actually experienced something. Until the monarch has to live in a high-rise flat with no food in the fridge and no money to feed the meter, she cannot begin to understand the plight of her poorest subjects.

Empathy, though, is like faith – it shouldn’t require evidence. Nothing breaks my heart more than homelessness, though I have mercifully never been in that position myself. Surely the essence of the empathetic heart is being able to find the common point of experience. The Queen Mother was not suggesting that her domestic situation was the same as that of the Eastenders; she was saying, however, that both knew what it was to have their homes threatened and even breached. One was much larger and grander, yes, but home nonetheless.

And, just the same, when I saw our Queen sitting all by herself at the funeral of her husband, I could finally understand how a blone from Lewis and the monarch of a kingdom might have something in common.

When the time came for the mourners to file into the church on the day of my husband’s funeral, a church officer approached me and asked, ‘are you alone?’ I felt his words like a knife to my heart. Yes indeed, I thought, quite alone. My best friend, my helpmeet, my companion in life, has gone on without me, and I have to navigate this path as best I can with no hand to hold.

I don’t imagine the pain of losing a spouse is any less when you are a world leader. Perhaps, indeed, the pain is greater still for one whose life is so public. She must now find a way in which to do everything she used to do, but always conscious of the absence where Prince Philip used to be. It is likely – though by no means certain – that her reunion with him will come much more quickly than mine with Donnie. When I was first widowed, I used to envy elderly women in my position, because I thought they wouldn’t have to experience so much of life without their husbands.

Now, though, I know it makes no difference. Jesus knew he would raise Lazarus from the dead, but he still wept with the family. His tears were not merely for their pain, but for the human condition – for the fall that has brought us to a place of death. Inevitably, whether we are exalted in the land or humble, we gather at the graveside and mourn for what the great leveller has removed.

Jesus – the Queen’s Saviour and mine – was displaying empathy. He was shedding tears for mankind, for the sin that brought death into our experience. Although he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead, death would eventually claim him a second time.

Of course, the depth of Jesus’ empathy was what led him to finally surrender himself on the cross. So moved was the Lord’s heart by what we have inflicted upon ourselves, that he did not merely weep with the bereaved: he gave himself to death in our place.

Christ became man and walked this Earth. He was born into the humblest of surroundings. As a man, he had no home to call his own, no regular income, no insurance policies. The King of Kings was a vagrant.

But that isn’t what made him the most empathetic man who ever lived.

Before God sent his Son into the world, there was compassion, and there was empathy for our plight. Do we castigate God because he has never had his home destroyed, or lost his spouse? Would it be fair to tell him that he cannot understand our pain? Of course not, because he is the very model of what empathy means. If I may put it like this, he carried empathy to its ultimate conclusion.

If we are followers of Christ, then, shouldn’t empathy be part of our character? There are things I have not suffered, practices I do not approve, walks I have not had to take . . . but when I see my fellow man in their midst, where is my heart? Do I rush to judgement, to vitriol and condemnation, or do I say, ‘there but for God’s grace go I’.

Christ came alongside all manner of sin and suffering. That was empathy. And we are capable of it, it is expected of us, because he loved us first.

Love Letters Straight From My Heart

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It has been quite a long time since I wrote anything even approaching a love letter. These days, my bag is more complaining emails and sarcastic texts. But it’s not a skill I plan to lose. So, today, I want to flex my writing arm in tribute to love: love so perfect and so  immeasurable that I think, folks, we’ve got to give it a capital ‘l’.

Love. 

I could tell you about how I met my husband. It would write itself, a blog about the best man I ever knew. And I could reminisce about how, weeks before he died, there were still flowers for me on Valentine’s Day. 

But I have a better love story for you even than that. Oh, and, if you don’t know this other love of mine, you could be forgiven for thinking he’s a bit of a villain. After all, he brought myself and my husband together. He knew we’d be happy. In fact, he saw to it.

And then he split us up.

What a cruel, heartless thing to do. We weren’t old: I was in my late thirties, Donnie was in his early fifties. Our twelfth wedding anniversary was a few months away. Because of his work, we had already been denied a lot of time together. And then, it was over.

All because of Love.

That’s right. Because. Not in spite of love, not denying or ignoring love, but precisely because of it. 

God so loved the world that he gave his only son. These are words as familiar as ‘I love you’ and they mean the same – only more so. The harrowing, hellish, suffering death of Jesus on that cross is God’s love letter to a broken world. Do you think it meant nothing to him, to be separated from his beloved, perfect Son, for my sin and for yours? 

God IS love. He didn’t invent it or create it – he embodies and defines it. What is not patterned on him is not really love, but a pale imitation.

He gave us those three little words that mean so much, that changed the course of not one life but countless thousands forever: 

‘It. Is. Finished.’

My heavenly Father’s love for me deserves a response. It is worthy of acknowledgment. Of all the love letters ever written, his is the only one that was designed to be shared. God wants me to pass it on. And I can do no more than to tell it to you in terms you’ll understand. 

We’re human and, being human, we experience love – if we’re that fortunate – in its various forms. When you find happiness with a life partner, however, it brings a special kind of fulfilment. I had that with Donnie and he, I believe, felt the same.

So, you see, it was real love. The kind that used to make me think I could never live without him.

What stopped me from falling into an abyss of despair, then ? How can I look back on what I had and not feel bitter that it has been taken away?

I must be an amazing person, no?

No. Those who know me are scratching their heads, going, ‘no, that’s definitely not it’ – and they’re right. 

It’s that all this is done in love. Real love. God gave his only, perfect son for me. Does it seem likely he would do anything to gratuitously hurt a person he loves that much? Of course not; God is love. 

A life lived in Christ is a life of love. Even though it may seem that he is inflicting pain, in fact, it is the very opposite. I would not willingly sacrifice the things or the people that he would have me give up, and so, in love, he gently removes them himself.

I love the Lord because he first loved me. And he has gone on loving me. God’s love is not the fragile emotion that we humans sometimes share – it is active, and it follows a set trajectory which ends in perfection. He doesn’t waver, or doubt, or forsake.

So, don’t pity me for my loss: envy me so much for my gain that you do everything you can to secure that love for yourself.

With God, every day is a celebration of real love.

Godness Without Goodness

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Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Well, the answer to that rather depends on who you ask. Robert Burns, I think, was steering us towards a negative answer. The prophet, Isaiah, on the other hand, urged us to ‘remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old’.

At the turn of the year, it is natural, however, to  reminisce. That other gobby spideag, Scarlett O’ Hara used to advise against such things, warning that the past would drag at your heart until eventually looking back would be all you could do. Normally I’d agree with her, but New Year is a special case. We stand on the threshold of 2021 and, however this twelve-month has served us, it’s hard to resist a last glimpse before finally taking our leave.

The world is in visible chaos. This pandemic drives home a truth that has been with us since our fall in Adam: we are not in control. It may be more apparent to us at this moment in time but it is, actually, no more true than it was last year, last century or last millennium. God has told us this repeatedly. He has told us gently and kindly, he has roared it at us, he has written it in fire and cloud across his beautiful Creation. That is, the same Creation we fractured when we first tried to take his place.

As those who commit wrongs often do, we failed – collectively and individually- to accept the guilt of that presumption. Instead, humankind has wasted all its time and effort trying to prove that God doesn’t exist and, if he does, he’s to blame for wars and childhood cancer, while man furnishes the peace treaties and the cures. 

We fail consistently to go to our Father and repent of this age-old struggle to wrest his godness from him and confer it upon ourselves. 

As a race, humanity lacks humility.

For me, 2020 was a fresh beginning. I came to terms with a lot of things, and put others into their rightful places. Because of the new way of living, I rediscovered the joy of home, and the manifold blessings of this life that my Father ordained for me. 

Another privilege I have enjoyed is peace. That is, the settled peace that permits me to take a step back from my own experience. I view it, if not with a dispassionate eye, then certainly with a perspective that comes from the Lord. If people say things about me that are unjust or untrue, what is that to me? My reputation with God is crucial; he sees and he knows. We may protest our goodness and our kindness, but if our actions witness to the contrary, that is recorded. It is simply a question of deciding whose opinion of me matters and I will take the courts of the Lord ahead of the court of public – or social media – opinion any day of the week.

I cannot say that I deserve the blessings he has poured down upon my head this year. In a period of uncertainty and grief for many, God has been more present than ever, and much more giving than I have any right to expect. Though I cannot say exactly how, I feel that I have turned a corner and that I am ready for a fresh beginning in 2021. Never really having been conscious of particular weakness or vulnerability, it is strange to acknowledge that I feel much stronger and more like my ‘old self’.

She is an old acquaintance that I don’t want to forget: Catriona Murray, Donnie’s wife. There is nothing about those years I would wish to blot from memory. I can survey them with happiness for the life well-lived that joined to mine for a time. Now, I am someone else. A germ of that same Catriona went into making this present incarnation, but I am renewed and refined by all that has happened since I held my husband’s hand for the last time. 

And because of these experiences, I ponder the resurrection of believers and see the same mind, the same creative hand at work. God can take us and make us into something else. Catriona the wife and Catriona the widow are the same person, and yet, not.  

He is working in his people, the world over, right at this very moment. Look at your loved ones – little children, old ladies and everyone in between: if they belong to him, he is remaking them in his own image once more. Perhaps he will have to bend them, and pummel them and change them almost beyond recognition, but he is conforming them to the original pattern of perfection.

We try to take his godness from him, and to possess it for ourselves. But, if we would only recognise his goodness and submit to it in Christ, 2021 could be a year of renewal and blessing for all.

Peace at any price?

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There is an idea abroad in the world that Christians are meant to be men and women of peace. To a degree, of course, it is true: it would be quite wrong to go about, wilfully stirring up trouble and provoking fights.  But I don’t believe that we are called upon to foster peace at any price. 

And what does the world call ‘peace’ anyway?

I know people who will happily persecute their neighbour, yet when the heat is turned back upon themselves, cry out for peace. They do not attach the same meaning to it that we find, for example, in the words of the heavenly host, accompanying the Angel who appeared to Mary, who said, ‘peace among those with whom he is pleased’ (Luke 2:14). 

That’s a rather different kind of peace. It has nothing to do with your earthly circumstances and everything to do with your Heavenly Father.

In Luke 12, Jesus denies that he is a bringer of peace, saying that he will cause division. Of course, this doesn’t cancel out the words of the heavenly host because they are not talking about the same thing. Christ divides because there are those who see him as he is, and accept his Lordship; and there are those whose eyes will not be opened.

Some things are far too important to be glossed over for the sake of an appearance of peace. Christians should not seek to hurt or upset others, obviously, yet the truth of the Gospel will always offend. The world today seems populated with the most sensitive people who ever lived. They deny the existence of God, but manage to be hurt by the idea that they are hell-bound sinners. Should we keep the truth from them for the sake of peace? 

Silence is not peace. Turning a blind eye to injustice is not peace. Letting others defend what you purport to hold dear does not make you a peaceful person; it just means that you’ve misunderstood the definition.

God doesn’t call on us to be simpering, acquiescent robots; he calls on us to pick a side and be prepared to defend it even against those we love best.

A Home For All Seasons

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I am writing this blog as a howling gale rages outside. Myself and the dog are tucked up by the woodburner, enjoying the warmth and safety of home. And it occurs to me, as I pour another cup of Dark Grey no.4 (tea, incidentally, not malt whisky), that it could all serve as a metaphor for the life that I live.

The house was built many years ago by the father in-law that I never met, as a home for his growing family, of which my husband was the baby. In time, it became his, and I moved here with him as a bride in 2003.

Over the years, we carried out work that made it more our home, including the installation of the Morso Squirrel woodburner upon which I am currently toasting my cable-knit slippers. And Donnie became a tree and shrub aficionado, growing obsessed with screening the house off from the world. I remember saying to him, as we made yet another pilgrimage to Maybury Gardens, to please not mention the word ‘privacy’ again. ‘David Iain is going to think we’ve got something to hide’, I said, as we both laughed at the thought.

It is on a feu, and it is not mortgaged. So, when my beloved Donnie passed away in 2015, I had the comfort of knowing it was completely mine. No one could take it from me. He had, in the last few months of his life, been single-minded in ensuring that I would be secure in every way that he could make certain of. That was always his instinct. 

I remember one evening, a few years before the shadow of death crossed our path. He had filled up the log basket and gone out to close the gates. ‘That always feels good’, he said, shooting the bolt home, ‘everything secured for the weekend, and both of us safe inside’. It was why the trees were so important too: he was putting a circle of protection around what meant the most to him. This house was everything: it symbolised his parents and siblings, and his marriage to me. It was everything warm, safe and positive in a life kindly and gently lived.

So, when that legacy passed into my keeping, I felt very keenly that it was like having his protection still. He cannot put his arms around me now, and I cannot go to him with my troubles – but I have our home, with all its happy memories and warm associations.

Every metaphorical storm – and every literal one too – that has blown since I lost him, sent me to the solace of this place. Here, I feel close to him, and safe. 

But there is an additional reason for this. No, not additional – it is, in fact, the foundation that was there all along. It was what motivated Donnie, it was what sustained us both as we walked through the valley of the shadow, as much as in the sunlit uplands of happiness.

Love. Real love, that is. Not the Mills and Boon sort, nor the kind that breaks under pressure. The original, the best, patented by the Creator.

Over my sitting room door hangs a sign that says ‘The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?’, the first verse of psalm 27. It speaks volumes to me of what home is, of what it always has been. I understand God’s protection because I have always been blessed to have the shelter of a loving home.

Now is no different. I have a home that was built with love, and – as my husband wrote in the last of his diary entries – was always a place of happiness. That sort of legacy is not meaningless, and I don’t hold it lightly.

Not long ago, a friend of mine was talking about a widow who had some slight bother with her neighbours, and kept saying, ‘this wouldn’t happen if Murdo was alive’. I suppose he thought she was full of self-pity and being melodramatic. But I believe that she probably had a point, because people do treat you differently. Kind people treat you more kindly, and those who are only out for themselves seek to exploit your solitude. 

God has a heart for the fatherless and for the widows, though. I don’t just believe that; I know it. He has given me to have a safe place in storms of all kinds. Sometimes, he causes them to be calm, and sometimes he lets them rage and fume and blow themselves out.

But always, I am here, in the warmth and safety of my home. When the forces outside batter and buffet me, I look up and I read once more:

‘The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?’

The answer is this: no one. I am safe in the shelter of one who can silence the storm with a word. 

A humbling thought if you have ever glibly said of yourself, ‘I am the storm’.