Christianity from the 43 bus: 7. Caledonian Church

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

These days are not auspicious ones for the Church of Scotland, declining at a breathtaking rate.  There are two Churches of Scotland in London - presumably to offer a purer form than the supposed English version buried within the even-more-rapidly declining United Reformed Church.

Neither of the C of S churches are on the 43 bus route.  But one long closed was, and lends a surprising tribute to an entity that will perhaps forever be part of the London namescape.

Today it is the Ramsay Scout Centre.  This is an unlikely spot for a scout centre, but once on this site stood Caledonian Church of Scotland.  It had a Scout Group in large numbers and Mr Ramsay was enterprising enough to secure the derelict site for the scouts' use as a centre.

Caledonian Church may seem an obvious name for a Scottish Church, but it was not that simple.  Caledonian Road nearby - with an Underground Station of the same name - vaguely points north toward Scotland but that isn't how it got it's name either.  Then there is Caledonian Market - but it doesn't really sell kilts.

All these Caledonianisms owe their existence to a school (an asylum in old terminology) for the children of poor Scots, not from this area but from the whole of London.  The Caledonian Church was a spin-off to provide a spiritual outlet and support for what became (thanks to Queen Victoria) The Royal Caledonian School.

So one way or another, this site owes more to children past and present than to adults. 

I like that.

Psalm 121: Hope from the Hills

 'I lift up my eyes to the hills,  Where does my help come from?'

Psalm 121 has long been a favourite psalm for many people.  To me it evokes one word - 'Scotland'.   Apart from having live there and the hilly landscape I think it also derives from the Scottish Psalm settings in which I first sang this psalm.

For good measure, here are some Scottish hills:

Whichever way you do the geology, hills are old.  They are also very big.  The Psalmist seems a little awed by the danger he faces, but when he looks to the hills . . . re remembers that his God is the Maker of hills. 

'My strength comes from the Lord who made the heavens and the earth'.

After such a daunting year it is a good thing to look at the hills, and to look beyond them to their Creator.  And to be strengthened by Him.

A Nation's Day

As I drove through a chill November fog this morning my thoughts headed north. For not only is it cold - it is also St Andrew's Day, the national day of Scotland (which, for the time being at least, is part of the same country as I am).  I shivered.

 

I decided to think warmer thoughts.  There is another country that celebrates its national day today, and its a LOT warmer.  

 

Barbados!

 

You'll be wanting the words of the National Anthem perhaps? Here's verse 2:

 

The Lord has been the people's guide
For past three hundred years.
With Him still on the people's side
We have no doubts or fears.
Upward and onward we shall go,
Inspired, exulting, free,
And greater will our nation grow
In strength and unity.

Burn's Night

After a night's rest in the home of a Minister and his family, Robert Burns left this poem.  It reflects the poet's great weakness in readily relating to fellow humans but feeling God to be some far-off distant and largely incommunicable Force. In this poem we see how much Burns loved the family, but God seems like a High Court Judge.

How happier a life he would have had if he had embraced what the Gospel offers - that the Great Power might be more our friend, closer to us, than any human family.  God is indeed the Highest of All but he is also our nearest and dearest too.

O Thou dread Pow'r, who reign'st above!
I know Thou wilt me hear;
When for this scene of peace and love,
I make this pray'r sincere.

The hoary Sire - the mortal stroke,
Long, long be pleas'd to spare;
To bless his little filial flock,
And show what good men are.

She, who her lovely Offspring eyes
With tender hopes and fears,
O bless her with a Mother's joys,
But spare a Mother's tears!

Their hope, their stay, their darling youth,
In manhood's dawning blush,
Bless him, Thou God of love and truth,
Up to a Parent's wish.

The beauteous, seraph Sister-band 
With earnest tears I pray,
Thou know'st the snares on ev'ry hand,
Guide Thou their steps alway.

When, soon or late, they reach that coast,
O'er life's rough ocean driven,
May they rejoice, no wand'rer lost,
A family in Heaven!

Mary Slessor

Today is the anniversary of the death of Mary Slessor in 1915.  Brought up in a poor family that had been impoverished by death and her father's resultant drinking, Mary was a child worker in a Dundee jute mill.  

Her only escape was her weekly Sunday and church.  Unlike the escapes that 21st century life offers, this one inspired her to look to do great things for God.  In time, armed with the toughness bred by her story, she was an unlikely lone female arriving in West Africa at a mission station as a nurse.  The rest, as they say, is history. 

In her home city of Aberdeen, in Dundee, on Scottish bank notes, but especially in Nigeria (as now is) Mary Slessor is recognised as the means of a revolution in the dignity of women and children - and the means of thousands of lives being protected.  Her fiery, Christ-inspired anger at the killing of mothers of the stillborn, of twins, of the mothers of twins, transformed a society.

Her appointment as the first female British magistrate in any territory advanced the value and dignity of women the world over.  

And, as we almost tire of pointing out, this was and is best achieved, by grasping - as Mary did - the Creator's dignity of his creation and the power of God to change a society by the agency of godly (not religious) people serving him and others.  

As Mary wrote to one of her prayer partners,

"I have always said that I have no idea how or why God has carried me over so many funny and hard places, and made these hordes of people submit to me, or why the Government should have given me the privilege of a Magistrate among them, except in answer to prayer made at home for me. It is all beyond my comprehension. The only way I can explain it is on the ground that I have been prayed for more than most. Pray on, the power lies that way."

A word from Scotland

The wonderful Scottish writer Horatius Bonar - you can read more about him by clicking here - also wrote these words that form a useful thought for every day on Scotland's National Day,

Take thy first walk with God!

Let Him go forth with thee;

By stream, or sea, or mountain path,

Seek still His company.

Thy first transaction be

With God Himself above;

So shall thy business prosper well,

And all the day be love

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.

Sabbatical Picture No 7 Still Standing

Storm Ophelia blew through yesterday amid the inevitable 21st century meteorological hysterics - unprecedented, catastrophic (this is a really pop twitter-ism just now), life-threatening (true - but so is the M25 and so why isn't that in the traffic news?).

On the edge of the North Atlantic people live, and lived, for whom Ophelia was just a noticeably windy few hours.  These standing stones show that like Stonehenge the exposed moors of the Isle of Lewis have more history of settlement than London, though faring less well in the last 2000 years or so.

There aren't many warm, still summer days on the Atlantic coast of the Isle of Lewis.  But that didn't mean that people couldn't be warm and still.  The secret is having a fire (conveniently achieved by walking outside and cutting some peat) and by having very thick stone walls (conveniently achieved by utilising vast numbers of boulders broken off the land by the weather).  Unlike the sad stories currently circulating from the balmy climes of California and Iberia (where wildfires are destroying people, their lives and their homes) the crofters of Lewis lived with storms in houses that in part still stand.

The secret of a peaceful life is not found not in the climate, but in the refuge we have found.  

My life is hid with Christ in God, wrote the apostle.

Psalm 102

St Andrew's Day (today) is Scotland's national day because of alleged stories of ancient saint's relics being taken to and enshrined there.  Thankfully, Scotland has given the world higher spiritual input than this.  Not least, psalm singing.

So,  

• Is it imaginable that God could ever be praised without a band or an organ?  And if so, how poor would that be? Well, that might work actually always bearing in mind the lack of organs and guitars in first century Galilee.
• Could Psalm 102 possibly be intended for singing? A Psalm perhaps, but all that sense of misery in it - and not even an added chorus bit? But yes, the Psalms are for singing.
• Can groups of people do the singing by themselves?  No choir or lead  vocalist? Apparently so.

1 To this my prayer O listen, LORD!
And let my cry for help reach You.
2 In day of grief hide not Your face.
Your list'ning ear toward me O bend;
The day I call, Your answer send,

3 For all my days go up in smoke,
And like a hearth my bones are burned.
4 Like grass my heart is crushed and dried;
I daily food forgotten leave;
5 My skin and bones together cleave.

With sighs and groans my frame resounds.
6 I'm like a desert pelican,
Or like an owl in ruined wastes.
7 I lie awake, as on the roof
A sparrow stands, alone, aloof.

8 All day my foes their taunts repeat;
Those filled with anger curse my name.
9 I food with tears and ashes mix,
10 For You on me in anger frown;
You raised me up to throw me down.

11 An ev'ning shadow are my days;
Like grass I wither soon away.
12 But You, Jehovah, sit enthroned
Forever; Your memorial
Abides through generations all.

Mrs Colville (continued)

So Mrs Colville returned to England unaware that her faithful door-to-door ministry and her discipling of one young man had, in the instrumentation of the Holy Spirit, become a catalyst for a great Revival in Ulster.  We never know what faithful obedience might produce.

The beauty of older stories is that we can trace them into their future.  We cannot do this for our own.  And so we zip forward to,2016.  That's fairly contemporary for a blog in 2016!

For just a few weeks ago a famed Baptist Church in Edinburgh City Centre moved into its new building.  When I say 'new' I mean 'fresh' because the the building was a former Parish Church.

But what has this to do with Mrs Colville?  It goes like this.  A young woman came to life in Jesus in that Ulster Revival and was so moved by the power of prayer in it that she set about praying for her church in Edinburgh City Centre.  Now what we want to read here is that, a year later, a thousand people came through the door.  The truth is that as the 20th century began and she had been praying for 30 years the church was down to 35 attendees.  

But she had bequeathed to her family the vigour to trust and pursue in prayer.  And so it was that a new pastor arrived.  Joseph Kemp teamed up with a Church Secretary who himself had captured his mother-in-law's vision of revival.  And the rest, as they say is history.

There did indeed become a year when a thousand people were saved at the chapel.  There were prayer meetings that were measured in days not minutes.  And so today it is still possible to buy unwittingly into Mrs Colville's legacy not only as a student in Edinburgh City Centre but in many other places through the world.

Except that of course it is not that this springs from one woman.  She was the trigger but the power was the Lord's.  She did not even believe she was a trigger - but she did believe she was the Lord's!  And that will do.

Baby Power

Congratulations to the William and Kate on the birth of their baby girl.

What a reminder it is of the power of a child to bring hope.

While old politicians thrash about trying to offer hope the nation's gaze quickly turns to a baby; the baby has no history of broken promises, has no false postures for the future, says nothing yet speaks volumes.  

When the leading story of this election is the popularity of a party dedicated to breaking up the United Kingdom it is wonderful to find that a baby speaks.

It's almost as good as Christmas!

Andrew's Day

A recent blog I read was bewailing why the churches (in England) are not taking more interest in next year's Scottish independence referendum.

 

I think today explains that. 

 

 

 

Eight people died in a horrible helicopter crash in Glasgow city centre last night - someone remarking it was the worst possible beginning to St Andrew's Day (the national day of Scotland - [and Barbados, see last year's blog]).

 

Whilst understanding what they meant, they are also possibly wrong.

 

Insofar as St Andrew's Day is about the Biblical disciple Andrew it was beautifully portrayed in the help that ordinary people gave to one another in Glasgow last night when the helicopter crashed on the city centre.  Andrew the fisherman was as ordinary as any Glaswegian, and he helped, first of all by bringing his brother to the Lord Jesus.

 

And whether Scotland is independent (as it usually has been) or in a union with the UK (as it currently is) the big things like city centre disasters are what the people of God and the kingdom of God are firstly about.  I can't get excited about Scottish independence not because it doesn't matter but because it doesn't matter enough.

Fore!

Today I feel impelled to tell the story of one of golf's most famous words, aptly pictured here:

The game of golf as we know it developed amid the coastal sand dunes of Eastern Scotland.  St Andrews is enshrined as the town most associated with the development of the sport that now spans the world.  And with it the shout, "Fore" as the now traditional warning.

At the beginning of April in 1877, Alexander Kilcallon was playing on the Royal  course when, like many before and since, he was struck by a ball 'inflicting a wounde grievusse'.  What was to make Alexander's story amazing was that exactly a year later to the day - this day - he was struck by another golf ball in a very similar way.  The duality seemed too much of a coincidence and he consulted the Minister of the Kirk (Church).  The Minister, Rev. Hamish Kincaird, was not at all sympathetic.  He despised the worldly pleasure of sport and pointed Alexander to a Biblical Proverb that occurs identically twice (in Proverbs 22:3 and 27:12) - identical verses for identical incidents. In the King James version it reads

A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished.

Perhaps it was the way that the Reverend Kincaird pronounced the word foreseeth to make his point, but Alexander Kilcallon took the word back to his golfing party as a cry of warning.  Presumably it was quickly reduced to the one syllable that any passing walker is wise to observe!

Not the intended application of the Proverb but very useful and undoubtedly the most shouted Biblical syllable on the golf course - though perhaps others are sometimes used in anger as well . . .  

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.

Not me