Candlemas, the Presentation of our Lord, and Groundhog Day

As the sun drenches a the morning of February 2, there is a lot to celebrate.  Or not.

If Candlemas be fair and bright, Come, winter, have another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain, Go, winter, and come not again.

Yes, here we are, halfway to the Spring Equinox - not a fact readily noticeable on social media, but more obvious to ancient peoples whose lives were ruled by changing seasons.

They looked for signs of spring, omens.  The animals perhaps?  Did they know?  A bear here,  a squirrel there.  Or, if you'd emigrated to Pennsylvania a woodchuck, or groundhog. And the clearer the sky was (i.e. the animal sees its shadow), the more wintry it was likely to remain (high pressure established and all that - though known by experience rather than meteorology).

The legendary film Groundhog Day uses it as the background for its story of day repeats.  But what the day is really about is - when is is the change coming?

And so it was that on 'this' day (using December 25 as his birthday), Mary and Joseph present the Christ-child Jesus, as required in the law, at the Temple,  And Anna rejoices and Simeon - well, let Johannes Eccard do this bit for us;

When to the temple Mary went,
And brought the Holy Child,
Him did the aged Simeon see,
As it had been revealed.
He took up Jesus in his arms
And blessing God he said:
In peace I now depart, my Saviour having seen,
The Hope of Israel, the Light of men.

Help now thy servants, gracious Lord,
That we may ever be
As once the faithful Simeon was,
Rejoicing but in Thee;
And when we must from earth departure take,
May gently fall asleep and with Thee wake

All the woodchucks in the world cannot end the winter.  But Christ came to do just that.

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."

Glorious Ruins

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.