Storm Ciara

It was a very wet and windy Sunday.

I'm not a huge fan of the over-safety culture in which we live, but nonetheless I tweeted a warning for people to think twice about the safety of travelling to our morning service.  Probably more related to common sense than my tweeting, several people hunkered down and stayed indoors.

Then, later on I discovered that the Queen had also stayed at home instead of her usual visit to the Church in Sandringham.  I don't expect she'd read my tweet, but for a 93 year old it seemed very wise too.

I reflected on this a bit.

Here's Psalm 104:

Bless the Lord, O my soul!

O Lord my God, You are very great:
You are clothed with honor and majesty,
2 Who cover Yourself with light as with a garment,
Who stretch out the heavens like a curtain.

3 He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters,
Who makes the clouds His chariot,
Who walks on the wings of the wind,
4 Who makes His angels spirits,
His ministers a flame of fire.

Unshockingly the monarch of Great Britain can be held back by the wind.

But the King of kings can, as it were, walk all over it.

World Cup Blogs 22: Portugal

In recent years Portugal's football team has become something of a supporting cast for one, Cristiano Ronaldo.  Ronaldo is one of the World's most famous footballers.

When I was younger the Portuguese team of those days was also dominated by the reputation of one star player - Eusebio.

Neither of these players, however, came from Portugal.  Eusebio was from Mozambique (a Portuguese colony at the time of his birth). Ronaldo is from Madeiras, islands way off the coast of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean.

Madeiras, which had been previously known, was made a colony of Portugal in the fifteenth century when an Atlantic storm blew some Portuguese ships off course and they ended up in one of its bays and found refuge there.

So, you never know the beneficial long-term effects of a troublesome storm: this might be a relief to any of us, including the British Prime Minister just now.

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.