Month: February 2023

War – First Anniversary              Word on the Week          25^th February 2023.

Nobody thought the Ukrainian War would last 12 long months. Now no one thinks it will be over soon!    It is much easier to start wars than to stop them!   Not that the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, shows any signs of wanting a ceasefire.

Indeed, his belligerent speeches before the ‘faithful’ this week attributed the outbreak of hostilities to the West.    This presented the fanciful picture of little Ukraine with supporting friends challenging Russia.    In a modern version of the David and Goliath contest, the roles are reversed, and David becomes the aggressor! (1 Samuel 16 verses 41 to 50). 

The history of wars demonstrate that they are waged in order to gain territory.   They tend to come out of extreme nationalism.   In the case of Ukraine, it is a territory that Putin clearly thinks should be Russian.  It was part of the lands restored to independence following the 1991 collapse of Soviet Union.

Those born since 1991 are known as the “Born Free Generation”.   They are eager for their nation to escape Russia’s shadow and join Europe and the West.    The East of Ukraine have Russian as their first language and were less inclined to go with their Eastern people and join NATO.

This reluctance has now disappeared. The war appears to have united the country under their able President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.   This was the very thing the invaders did not want to happen!   

But there are many wars being fought in the world right now.   Where do they come from?   Hear it from the Book of James Chapter 4 Verses 1 to 2 in the ‘Message’ paraphrase: –

‘Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from? Do you think they just happen? Think again. They come about because you want your own way, and fight for it deep inside yourselves. You lust for what you don’t have and are willing to kill to get it. You want what isn’t yours and will risk violence to get your hands on it. You wouldn’t think of just asking God for it, would you? And why not? Because you know you’d be asking for what you have no right to.’ 

But there is something we do have access to whether we are Putin or Zelenskiy or you or me and that is the cleansing blood of Christ which applied to the sinner opens the door to forgiveness and a Christ centered way of life (1John 1 verses 7 to 9).  This is the miracle of God’s grace we call the Gospel comes through prayer in faith to Jesus Christ.

Anniversaries                   Word on the Week                     18^th February 2023.

We appear to be living longer these days.   Our neighbour passed the 100 mark a couple of years’ ago and this week celebrated reaching 102.

This led me to figure out that my mother would be 123 years old had she lived to this day which is in fact her birthday.   She lived all her life in the 20^th century; her age matching the year which made it easy to work out how old she was!

She was an energetic person and she needed to be.   Our household consisted of my father’s father, my mother’s mother, my parents and me!   Both grandpa and grandma lived on into their 90ies and so were very much part of my early years.

Not so my mother’s father who was a farmer and died at age 64.   He didn’t feature in my early years.   In my teens bits of information filtered through. It seemed that there had been a falling-out over the Gospel.   Gran remained in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland (it was the church farmers went to in those days) and grandad moved to the Christian Brethren.

There had been a revival around the middle of the 19^th century, the fires of which did not die down for a number of decades.   Kenneth Jeffrey is the author of ‘When the Lord Walked the Land’ a book which writes up the dramatic effects the revival had on the three main groups living there in the North-East of Scotland.   

First it broke out in the city of Aberdeen, then the farming community, to be followed quickly by the fisher folk.   The latter felt unable to join with the farmers (they smelt of fish) so they built Brethren Halls, many of them still standing but sadly few in their original use.

Grandpa Ross, mother’s father, must have ‘witnessed a good confession’ (1Timothy 6 Verse 12) to have moved church and joined the Christian Brethren with its practice of believer’s baptism.   Clearly this was a bridge too far for Gran!   Mother was never baptised which highlights the family difficulties around conversion.

Mother did teach me to pray.   The nightly prayer was ‘Gentle Jesus meek and mild, listen to a little child; pity my simplicity, teach me Lord to come to thee.  The last line of the prayer was answered when I was age 26 (St Matthew 11 verses 28 to 30). Praise God.

I too moved from the Presbyterian Church to an Evangelical Church and was baptised at age 30.   Strange as it may seem I did not know that my path mirrored that of Grandpa Ross until some years later!   As we saw in last week’s blog sometimes prayers take a long time before they are fully answered (1 Corinthians 3 verse 6).

Merkinch                          Word on the Week                     11^th February 2023.

What has a down-town district in a remote town in the Scottish Highlands got to do with ‘Word on the Week’?   How could such a place ever be newsworthy?               

Merkinch was usually referred to as ‘The Ferry’.   The place where the car ferry left Inverness and travelled across the Beauly Firth to North Kessock on the Black Isle.  

It was a deprived area in my time there and deteriorated further when the bridge was built spanning the Firth and rendering the ferry redundant.   There were no churches in the area so we prayed and started an outreach from the Baptist Church in the town.

We hired accommodation in the local school and distributed leaflets in the area welcoming young people to a weekly event in the school.   In the 1970ies there were far less restrictions surrounding the hire of the schoolroom.   The continuing occupation depended on the room being left tidy and the good will of the Janitor!

The highlight of each meeting was the ‘Witness Box’.   This was a popular form of evangelism in its day.   A local Christian would be invited into the Witness Box and cross-examined, usually by me, to see if he really was a Christian!    The young people, who would have had some Gospel teaching, would be invited to add their questions.

The person being examined then told the story of how he became a Christian from the time he first placed his faith in Jesus (Acts 26 verses 12 to 29).   An understanding of being saved by God’s grace and not by our efforts would become plain (Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9).

The questions were answered, sometimes involving the witness in a thorough grilling, and a verdict was taken by a show of hands.    I remember marvelling that never once did they find the witness’s testimony lacking!

What brought all this to recall was my turning on ‘YouTube’ on Tuesday evening and being amazed to read the ‘Notice’ of a new Church in Merkinch!   Fifty years in the making!   I wonder how many from the original meetings were there to recount their experiences?   All praise to God who gives the increase (1 Corinthians 3 verse 5 to 9).

Brigit’s Day                      Word on the Week                     4^th February 2023.     

We have a new Public Holiday.   February 1^st has been decreed.   This brings us into line with the bulk of the EU with the same number of public holidays.

Historically this was St Brigit’s Day. The name Brigit means different things to different people!   She is claimed both by Christian and pagan sources.   Her trademark cross, woven with reeds, adorns many homes.  Her witches profile is becoming more prominent.   So symbolically, is she to be known by her cross or cauldron?   

In Wales she was known by fire.   It was a Welshman, the historian Gerald of Wales (1146-1243) to whom we owe a valuable account of “the fire of St Brigit”, believed to have burned continuously in Kildare for centuries.   

Today this seems to have morphed into the 1^st February pagan Festival of Light replete with fire-dancers, music and storytellers.   A portrait of Brigit has been painted on the ‘Wonderful Barn’ Leixlip showing her in a green cloak representing her Irish origins.

Brigit was born around the year 450 in Faughart near the border with Northern Ireland.   Her name is incorporated in a variety of places.   There is the Bridewell which was a prison in Dublin and is now a Garda station.   St Bride’s in London, also started as a prison, has now become a church with a Holy Well.

The girls name Brigit lost its popularity when it was abbreviated to Biddy. This occurred largely through the hugely popular RTE ‘soap’ Glenroe (1983 – 2000) where the leading character’s wife was nicknamed Biddy.  This concerned Archbishop Tomás Ó Fiaich who lamented the loss of patronage to St Brigit and encouraged women to name their daughters after the Saint!

It is now widely doubted that St Brigid was a Christian Saint at all (the Catholic Church delisted her in 1969) but rather a Pagan goddess appropriated by Irish neo-pagans. Her cult was a powerful one, and remains so in 2023, having just inspired Ireland’s newest holiday.

Legend has it she made her first cross from rushes she found on the ground beside a dying man in order to convert him to Christianity.   I wonder if she used Jesus’ words “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son (on the cross), that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (St John Chapter 3 verse 16).

The cross was where Jesus carried our sins and dealt with them once and for all.   Was Brigid’s cross used as a visual aid to get the dying man to put his faith in what Jesus did when he died for him? 

There is probably no better use for her cross today than to show that Jesus died for others and now lives for them.