CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: It’s easy to be sceptical in our troubled world

Lorna and I spent a week recently in Inverallochy, a former fishing village in Aberdeenshire. Each house, built gable-end to the beach, reflected its occupants and their history with gardens, and extensions, outbuildings and distinctive paintwork. One, called ‘Galilee’ had a picture of Jesus in the porch.

Our kitchen window looked out to the North Sea. There were table mats with an idealised summer harbour scene: seagulls, trawlers at anchor, a contented old fisherman sitting on a bollard, jollity in the waterfront pub. In stark contrast, the large photo on the wall showing wreckage of the trawler Sovereign which ran aground near Inverallochy in 2005 loomed disturbingly over our bacon and eggs.

I thought of this juxtaposition of security and threat when I saw the traditional child’s rhyme in a gift shop at Macduff: ‘Read me a story then tuck me in tight. Tell me you love me, and kiss me good night.’ How achingly poignant these words reflecting our human need for security seem when we know how fragile and uncertain life is.

We had fun visiting Kinnaird Head Lighthouse in Fraserburgh, a converted castle. I remembered the Christian invitation to seek a place of security, while not hiding behind defensive walls, rather being a source of light to others as they plot their course through life.

It’s easy to be deeply sceptical in our troubled world. What can give this ultimate level of both security and freedom? Certainly not ‘religion’, or politics, or wealth, or an organisation, or an ideology.

When I am tempted to despair at the fragility of life, I remind myself that I have experienced enough of the protective love and joy of God both in darkness and light to entrust myself to God, seeking security behind the parapets of a love which will never crumble.

It is to God we come at the end of each day, and at the end of our lives. And we commit ourselves to this great Being, who draws near, who beguiles us with a story of challenge and comfort, who loves us and whom we love, whose ‘good night’ assures us that a ‘good morning’ is coming.

There was no resurrection for the Sovereign beached on the rocks. But there was resurrection for Jesus, the sovereign of heaven. And this Jesus promises to bring us after death to an unimaginable dimension, to a place prepared, a cottage say, individually styled for us, and his feet will be as familiar there as they were on the shores of Galilee.

God is our strong tower, and individually and collectively the lighthouse of our faith signals the warning, the wonder, the welcoming warmth of God.

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