I KNOW.....
25th Sep 2019
We have just returned from holiday in the Western Isles of Scotland. The scenery was stunning and the weather mostly good, but at times challenging. We had a great time.
In these islands there are many unusual things, for example a gravestone often contains the address of the deceased, as so many have precisely the same name. However, when walking around one cemetery, the thing that struck me was that I could not find a single headstone with any words of hope. I found that very sad and was reminded of the words on my father’s grave which say, “Absent from the body….. present with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:8). Our hope as believers of being “forever with the Lord”, is, as it says in Hebrews, “an anchor to the soul.”
I was also reading about the history of these islands and discovered that a hermit had spent years living a lonely, austere and deprived life on one of these remote islands believing that it would bring him nearer to God. How could he have missed the words of Paul in Ephesian 2:8, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.”
We may wonder at someone living such a hard and difficult life hoping to earn his salvation, and yet live as if God only rewards us for our performance and not understand that it is entirely by grace that we are saved.
As I reflect on these I find myself recalling Paul’s words to Timothy, “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.” (2 Timothy 1:12)
I have been thinking a lot about these two situations and thanking God for the assurance of the eternal life that I have now and that will never end, and that “the life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
by Charles Sibthorpe
