The house in which I was born..... USED TO BE HERE!
The hall of the Church where I was baptised was recently demolished. Maybe the church will soon be knocked down too?
Behind it lies my first school. How long before it is also bulldozed?
Clearly I am never going to be famous, as there is nowhere left to put up a plaque!
It is sad, though, that so many places which were so much a part of my early life are now no more. But this is life, is it not? Important though certain places often are to us, they rarely remain unchanged forever.
Of course, there are many occasions when all sorts of familiar landmarks may be swept away from our lives and we are left feeling lost and bewildered. What do we do then?
I remember many years ago when I was a teenager and our church was without a minister an old retired minister was preaching. He preached on a text from Psalm 11. (verse 3)
"If the foundations be destroyed, what then can the righteous do?"
His answer? 'They can go on being righteous.'
It's an answer which has stuck with me ever since, but I don't think it only means 'go on doing the right thing.' I think righteousness is as much about right relationships as it is about right behaviour, and, in particular it is about our relationship to God. So to 'go on being righteous' is about hanging in there with God even, and especially, when everything else has been swept away.
2 comments:
Iain, its terrible growing old. Or maybe the absence of landmarks is just a "Port" thing. My old school has been demolished - as has the church in which I was baptised. But, like all good Portonians, we can go on being righteous.
I tried to campaign against the demolishing of Carluke high.
Evidently I did not succeed. It will be a nice building I think, But I'd rather have spent my last year of my school life in my own school, my old school. I will certainly miss it.
hx
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