Happy St Andrew's Day!

This is my favourite picture from my Sabbatical and on St Andrew's Day it seems appropriate as it comes from Scotland, and the Isle of Harris.

The question is, what is the building in the middle of this picture?

The answer is obvious.  It is a bus shelter.  And it is easy to imagine on this windswept moor that shelter would be very important.  Life-saving might be nearer the truth given the (understandable) infrequency of the W13.  Three hours wait?

Isn't that a sheep waiting for a bus?  But no, of course not.  Sheep, even in Harris, don't wait for buses.  The sheep is in the wrong place.

On reflection, though, I imagine that over a year this construction has many more sheep in it than people.  It may have been put here as a bus stop, and look like a bus stop but it is really mostly about sheep.

And when the lifelong fisherman from Galilee whose name was Andrew (and whose day today is) began to follow Jesus he looked and sounded like a fisherman, and looked like he should have been a fisherman, but the Lord told him 'from now on you will be a fisherman of people'.  Or to put it another way, from now on you are going to be all about sheep.

St Andrew's Day

I've spoken in a lot of places.  In front of thousands, hundreds, dozens and less than ten; in freezing cold and searing heat, before vagrants and fabulously wealthy people.  More stories than a blog could ever cover.

But one place I spoke I will certainly never forget and Scotland's day - St Andrew's Day -  is a special day to remember it.  It was February, it was cold and windy and it was Howmore Church on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides.

To the west of Howmore Church there is a small area of moorland, a beach and then the North Atlantic Ocean.  Some thousands of miles later comes northern Labrador and Hudson Bay.  To the east there is not much either, as the picture shows.   Yes, that building is Howmore Church.

Amazing to think, on St Andrew's Day, that the news of Jesus the Messiah that Andrew first shared with his Galilean brother Simon (later called Peter) reached as far as Howmore!  The ends of the earth indeed.