Bit Choppy Today!

Although today was beautiful, with warm sun filtering through misty cloud and wind blowing out to sea, the incoming tide in Pembrokeshire was awesome. I guess it was scenes like this that attracted the early Christian saints such as David to establish themselves and their followers at this end of God's world - they were continually reminded of the power of the Creator in the countryside within which they eked out a living from the land, served their God and spread the Word.

Today we seem to have lost a sense of awe about the world we inhabit. We have also become ignorant about it. Our knowledge of science can sometimes blind us to the spiritual, and we fail to see God’s hand in the natural laws that govern this world. J Wallace Hamilton, writing in ‘Who Goes there? What and where is God?’ says ‘An amazing thing has happened in our way of thinking. In a world that could not for one moment exist without the activity of God, we have conditioned our minds to a way of thinking that leaves no room for him. So many of our wants are provided by what seem to be natural and impersonal forces that we have lost sight of the great provider in the midst of providence… if you ask a child where milk comes from, he won’t  think of saying “From a cow.” He will say “From a container.”’

Early Christian monks in Ireland had no such problems and were still well connected to the God who provided for all their needs. They were quite taken with stories of the Desert Fathers (who found a spiritual solitude in often remote and harsh countryside) and looked for a similar wilderness where they could give themselves over to God. A lack of real desert did not put them off. Certain boggy areas were set aside for prayer (some place names still have the element 'disert' in them), and they turned to the one wilderness that they had in abundance – the Atlantic Ocean – and set off in flimsy leather and wickerwork boats in search of ‘the desert in the ocean’

They were looking for land where they could settle; land which could supply them with water and food; land where they could be alone with their God, and hundreds of monks set out on the potentially perilous journey across the ocean trusting not in navigational skills but God to keep them safe.

I watched a man in a kayak ride the waves today and thought.........'Rather you than me, mate!'

Some quotes here from a Bible Study I wrote a while ago called 'ConneXions' which has a Celtic theme running through it...