I've been sorting through my ridiculously large collection of photographs, a product of the digital age's invitation to wastefulness. Though I have a moderate interest in history it is hardly my obsession and so I am amazed to find how many photographs I have that look something like this . . .
It is a picture among many pictures that I have of ruins.
In my defence, I have rarely found myself alone as I have stood seeking to get the corner of the broken buttress or the top of the long-empty window frame in my composition. Ruins, and Britain has a seemingly biased love for them, are somehow glorious. So much so that, for example, I am not as sure I would have taken this picture of the significant but unpretentious abbey if it were still complete.
Glorious ruins was the picturesque phrase coined by Francis Schaeffer to describe humanity in this fallen world. I think that is very good. The vestiges of greatness are there. Yet history cruelly draws our gaze to horrific wonders; isolated or even systemic stories of infanticide, a fate only narrowly escaped by the infant Lord of Glory in Herod's jurisdiction. There is no human aspect that does not show brokenness as well as beauty, where the glory is the glory of ruins.
It is the peculiar work of God that makes humanity's ugly story somehow glorious. Not so that we will see our belonging in the ruins but that we may see a portent of our undeserved glory there.
I thank Thee, Lord, that here our souls
Though amply blessed,
Can never find, although they seek
A perfect rest;
Nor ever shall, until they lean
On Jesus’ breast.
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