CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: Have I seen enough light to be convinced that Jesus is real?
My wife Lorna and I recently spent three nights at Crieff Hydro Resort in lovely autumnal Perthshire. The place holds so many memories from my childhood and youth.
Built in 1868, the Hydro was originally patronised by well-off middle-class Scots - many of whom were Christians - seeking a place of rest and refreshment, and the therapeutic immersion of the ‘water cure’. The regime was austere: no alcohol, a fine if you weren’t at the table in time for Grace. But what luxury compared with the darkness of city slums not so many miles away.
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I was brought to the Hydro as a young teenager by my parents who regularly attended the annual Christian Medical Fellowship Conference weekend.
I was tentatively accepted into the posse of doctors’ kids thundering along the corridors. I sat in the massive drawing room with the pipe organ, listening as the Famous Preacher expounded scripture. I fell in love with a desperately beautiful girl a year younger than me, but lacked the nous to say or do anything. I remember the painful Sunday departures into a bitter cold November night, back to my only-child solitariness.
And some years later, I recall slipping in to the Hydro as I waited to check in for a conference at a nearby church centre, heavy with sadness and anxiety, taking refuge in the anonymity of the TV room.
I wondered if, on this visit with Lorna, I could overlay the bittersweet sadness of these with new memories, but this was unrealistic. The child, the young man is still very much alive within me. This time too there were times of emotional numbness and lack of joy, when God seemed absent.
But now (as then) there were so many good things, especially the time to chill and talk with Lorna. There were moments of peace in the bar (no Temperance now!) drinking a tomato juice mocktail and listening as the pianist segued from classical pieces to Christian worship songs and I found myself saying: ‘Thank you, Father.’
Life holds both darkness and light. Have I seen enough of the latter to be convinced that the Jesus the Famous Preacher proclaimed is real? It depends which day you ask, but on my clearer-seeing days, my answer is an unequivocal ‘Yes’.
The God who was present in the days of fines for missing Grace; the God who, all unknown to me occupied the chair next to mine in the TV lounge: that God is still present. ‘Come to me all you who are weary and thirsty. Come, find a hydrotherapy of the soul. I will refresh, and cleanse, and prepare you to go out, strong in your weakness, to bring light to dark places.’
