Home

It would never work in an estate agent's (realtor's) window or website.  Yet until the 1930s this was home to a Hebridean family and, as necessary, their livestock.  

What no picture can convey is how nice it is.  The smell of burning peat, the warm shelter from the wind howling off the ocean outside, the self sufficiency of a setting in tune with its natural surrounds. 

Having a very good internet connection has become important (and ironically my mobile phone signal was way better there than it is in Muswell Hill).  Yet this connectedness has come at a price of disconnectedness; from each other in family and community, from the rhythms of night and day, wild and gentle weather, from connectedness to animals and to the land around us and probably most profoundly a disconnectedness from our own souls and from our God.

Are we at home in contemporary London?  Is that even possible? 

Graih

Just returned to town from a three week road (and boat) trip that included a Retreat (not long enough), the Keswick Convention and even (briefly - twas more than enough) the General Synod (!).  But from the Isle of Man I loved visiting and hearing more about the above ministry which I first heard about several years back from the church's then pastor.  Coming from London it is amazing to see this kind of work being done, needing to be done, and being done so well in such a place as the island.

Praise God for these guys.

A Sabbath Day's Journey

In the hotel there are two lifts/elevators to choose from.  This is inconsequential most days of the week, but come the Sabbath (Friday sunset) it becomes religiously and practically significant.

The notice tells us that the lift on the right is the Sabbath Elevator.  You could enter it as a Gentile but, inviting though it seems, it stops at every floor (7 in the case of this hotel) while the door opens automatically and closes.  By doing so it prevents the devout from having to operate electrical switches (work) on the Sabbath.

I did get in it once.  I stood for a second or two with nothing much happening and decided to use the non-Sabbath elevator (even though I was on Sabbatical).

For me the Sabbath Elevator was too much like hard work. 

Stones and stoniness

It's a lump of decorated stone.

It is, though, very old. 

It is on display because it illustrates the way in which synagogues became places of considerable art, the people showing their communal commitment to religion, their culture and possibly their God by expensive and expansive decoration.

It may be a lump of stone, but it says something.

It speaks, but it cannot listen.  That could only be done by the people who attended the ancient gathering place.  Did they listen?  Well, they heard words each week.  Then, beneath these ancient stones came another day.  The voice that spoke was the voice of God himself.  

These are stones from the synagogue at Chorazin in Galilee.  

Jesus commentary:

“Doom, Chorazin! Doom, Bethsaida! If Tyre and Sidon had been given half the chances given you, they’d have been on their knees long ago, repenting and crying for mercy. Tyre and Sidon will have it easy on Judgment Day compared to you" (The Message, Luke 10)