It’s been a day of discovering new places as we have had a Sunday exploring Glasgow and then Edinburgh to celebrate Lis’s birthday.
I’m not a confident driver in cities! I get in the wrong lane, I panic when it is suggested by she sitting next to me I might get in that very tight parking space, I dawdle along so much so the car behind me blows its horn at me to get on with it, and so on… then I have to park miles away from where we wanted to be, so much so I have to remember where I parked the car or even where the car park was!!!
Journeys can be hazardous and difficult and you have to have courage to face them. The Old Testament passage for the second Sunday of Lent was Genesis 12, the story of Abram called to leave all he knew and journey to a place his God would show him. I wonder if he panicked as much as I did driving round city centre Glasgow seeing Sauchiehall Street four times!
Tonight we found a lovely all vegan eatery in Edinburgh to have dinner in. The trouble was I could find nowhere to park and I was all for giving up. Abram could have felt the same. No map, no details, no direction. He sent out not knowing whither he went. But he kept going because despite little information, he knew the destination was worth the effort. Like our fab dinner tonight was and the visit to Macintosh at the Willow was this afternoon and a detour to see the Kelpies and cross the new Queensferry crossing over the Firth of Forth.
Hebrews 11 is a chapter of the bible full of stories of people who journeyed in faith, including Abram, renamed Abraham. Of how many of us can it be said 'Having heard the call of God, they went out in response"? And again of those who do make some response can it be said, "He was content to sojourn as in a strange country"? These are searching questions for us, especially today, when the attractions of the age are so multiplied. It is quite certain that no satisfactory answer to these questions is likely, unless it can be said of us, as of Abraham:
“ He looked for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God."
You can hear me waffle on about this journeying as it was my turn to do the recorded service for our Circuit today: link below.
When we journey, we need assurance we don’t travel alone or that it will be okay. This afternoon as we left Glasgow driving on the motorway a rainbow was ahead of us, reminding us of the promise of God that whatever happens to us, we will not be destroyed by life. In the uncertainty and drabness of the journey, God also gives us colour. How amazing were the skies in Scotland this afternoon as a rainbow lifted our spirits…
I don’t know who Charles Studd is but I like his quote:
“ Abraham, a simple farmer, at a word from the Invisible God, marched, with family and stock, through the terrible desert to a distant land to live among a people whose language he could neither speak nor understand! Not bad, that!”
Today as you read this, what journey are you being invited to take? Where do you long to be? Are you excited by the destination?
Of course as I’ve said every journey has its hazards. A friend on Shetland has shared they have snow (see picture of Lerwick tonight below) It is coming south! Journeying anywhere over the next few days may involve that snow shovel set my dear wife whose birthday we have celebrated today insisted impractical me buy in Yorkshire Trading ages ago and put in the boot!!!
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