Whitehaven

I only went to Whitehaven once.  Yet I clearly remember it without my memory being jogged by the killings committed by Derrick Bird last week.

Just as it has come into the media glare for all the wrong reasons, so I remembered it as such.  Before I drove there during a lakeland holiday the name Whitehaven somehow conjured a vision a little like its namesake in Queensland, Australia . . .

I drove over the hill down toward the town to be confronted by something like this, only wetter and darker . . .

A more depressing sight set between beautiful lakeland hills and the sea it was hard to imagine.  And I fully expected to maintain this personal prejudice against the rain-battered bricks of Whitehaven until the day I die for I have certainly never intended to return as a holidaymaker to reassess my view.

My view has been reassessed however as a result of Derrick Bird's actions.  For it was also in the rain that the people of Whitehaven gathered last evening to remember and respect those who were killed last week.   A thousand people.

What is beautiful about Whitehaven is a community where people care and support each other and, however stumblingly, turn toward the Prince of Peace.  Deliberately, or accidentally, they have reflected to us all the character of God in a world that they know better than most sometimes reflects the darkness of another prince.