Sunlight shimmered on the flat calm of Loch Fyne. We poked
around the ruined castle at Skipness, across the sound from the isle of Arran. The
lightest of breezes teased our hair.
We moseyed along to explore the nearby cemetery, reading the
headstones which had not yet been scrubbed flat by years of weather. So many
died so young. So much heartache behind the names of children who died in
infancy. So many tears shed in this place, over lives lost, lost to the sea,
lost to disease, lost to hardship: lives known to God alone now.
In the far corner I spied a bramble bush, laden with ripe,
sweet, juicy fruit. We had no bag with us, so I emptied a section of my
ridiculous handbag and started to fill it. There are crumbles to come, and jam.
Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, Jesus taught,
it will bear no fruit. In this remote corner of Scotland, people have come and
gone: the Picts, early Celtic Christians, conquering kings from Denmark, Viking
raiders. Ordinary people, too, living the lives God gave them to live. Lives with
their challenges and sorrows and joys. All gone now into the compost of history,
but still alive in the heart of the Almighty.
And in the corner of that walled garden of remembrance is a
cluster of bramble bushes bearing a crop sweet and juicy, available to anyone with
eyes to see, and a ridiculous handbag waiting to be filled.
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