After posting last Wednesday’s blog, Dad gave an amazing ‘sign following’ – quite literally, in a sign
Hilary and I “had a notion” as the song says, to visit her birth city of Londonderry or Derry.
Last week we had been in the town of Hilary’s teen years, Downpatrick. Rocky (pictured above at the Giant’s ring near Belfast) had taken us together with his best friend Paul McAree to visit for the first time ever, the Catholic Cathedral.
Although Hilary lived beside the Anglican Cathedral in historic Downpatrick and played in the grounds (in fact literally on the gravestone of the Irish Trinity of saints, Patrick, Bridget and Columba) she had never crossed the street to enter the Catholic counterpart…….until last week that is, when Paul whose family also hailed from the town introduced us to life on “the other side of the tracks.”
It was a fairly traumatic initiation as we needed to “use the bog” as we say in Ireland. When the janitor of the Cathedral discovered we had rushed into the Restroom, she almost had a Covid apoplectic fit, God love her!
Fresh from this memorable cross community experience in Down I “had a notion” again, to cross the tracks in the Maiden City.
On discovering that the Anglican Catherdral was still under Covid lockdown, I climbed the *green hill” not far away, but “outside a city wall “ as Derry’s famous hymn writer wrote, to visit St Eugene’s Catholic Cathedral, which was open. (The virus is obviously a bigot and is attacking Protestants more ferociously than Catholics😊)
As I passed through the Cathedral gates, I looked up, and there on the sign at the entrance was the very scripture I had blogged about that morning!
“I rejoiced when I heard them say let us go to God’s house.”
Then I noticed the error on the sign, made many years ago, as if writ for me on that day!!!
You can see the scripture reference was mistakenly inscribed, not as Psalm 122, but Psalm 121!
I remembered as a teenager chucking at my spiritual mentor’s expression of reassurance when someone made a mistake, “Sure it could happen to a bishop! “ Now here at the Cathedral, “the seat of the bishop”, the Bishop’s mistake (after all that’s who the buck stops with) was plain for all the world to see.
As I entered the sanctuary the janitorial ladies were as busy in Derry as in Down!….frantically sanctifying with spray and cloth, door knobs and railings.
I took a photo of the beautiful stain glass window at the front of the Cathedral and noticed the stain of the intruder in the foreground…..fear written across his forehead…..an insurgency into the very heart of the faith community!
I looked up the Psalm that should have been 122 but was mistakenly 121. Of course it was no ‘mistake’ at all in God’s economy.
“I lift my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from?”
This verse references the pagan hilltop shrines and asks the question of the people of Israel,
“Who is it you are trusting in for help? Are you looking to something or someone other than the living God for your salvation?”
This week we have lived amidst the stunning majesty and beauty of the Rosguill Peninsula.In the middle of last night I was lead to go outside and look up, beyond the hills of Derry and Donegal to the heavens. Freed from the glare of the city the vast array of heavenly lights now visible to my naked eye was breathtaking!
Like the prophet’s servant of old, Father reminded me that this was the heavenly host, ‘without number’ that was arrayed on behalf of his believing saints in the midst of these dark times.
From the whole of creation the answer booms forth…….
“Our help comes from the Lord……the Maker of heaven and earth.”
I realized that human ‘mistake’ made years ago was ‘meant’ to be,
…..for such a time as this.
What a beautiful highlighting by our Father of the message of reassurance in last week’s Ps. 122 blog……”You Can’t Get It Wrong.” ……for He incorporates our errors into His foolproof redemptive plan.
……and He is also not as concerned as we often are about ‘getting it right’ (and not wrong!). If we do something simply because we just ‘had a notion’ it’s not so much about what we are doing, but about who we are doing it with.
In other words are we living in constant companionship with our Father?
………living life, looking for Him, listening to Him, and learning from Him, how to truly love, as His children
