Ian Duncan

I won't do this often but I'm posting here the address that was given today.

Ian Duncan was one of our older members, a lovely man in all sorts of ways. He died last week and the service of thanksgiving today was a rich celebration of a life that was lived to the full.

It gives an idea of just the sort of calibre of men and women here who down the years have served the cause of Christ. And an idea, too, of just how much we miss them when they're gone.

It's quite long - so get yourself a cup of coffee, settle down, and let the Lord speak to your heart.

When the notice appeared in The Herald this week, announcing that Ian had died, the whole unusual layout of the page seemed somehow to have had Ian himself in mind.

Up to the right, a simple little poem had been printed, whose title with its big bold letters was the thing that caught the eye – I love my Jean.

Such a very fitting, providential tribute to the gift that Jean has been to him for close on sixty years (yesterday being the 59th anniversary of their marriage).

Beneath the poem, and alongside the regular notices, there was a large and colourful advert for the Earl Haig Fund, a cause which Ian had been glad to support, not least as one who’d served himself through the war.
And right underneath the notice that Ian had died, a notice which stood alone in its own very central column, was this Scripture text from Philippians chapter 4 –

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."

The words are so very apt, underlining so clearly that the heart of our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ is a rich and enduring relationship with God as our Father on high. Not only the One who speaks through his word, but the One to whom we also may pour out our hearts.

We, all of us, face our own trials. And Ian was not short on the troubles and worries, the burdens and cares, the sorrows and griefs, that can cloud our horizons and darken our spirits and vex us beyond what our words could ever declare.

It was worry which triggered the illness with which Ian has struggled these last many years.

And it was sorrow with which he was more than a little familiar across all the long years of his life. The sudden and tragic death of his younger brother, Malcolm: the devastating loss of his youngest daughter, Christine, in her infancy, and then, long years later on, the grief that there was in the death of his older son, Alasdair – these were griefs that only those who’ve walked that path themselves can truly know.

The pain of such grief is deep and profound: and it’s there in these times of such hardship and hurt – it’s there that we learn what a blessing it is to be able to pour out our hearts to a God so familiar himself with such grief.

Ian grew up in a home where such truths were most surely impressed on the hearts of himself and his five younger siblings. His father, the Rev Robert Duncan, was the United Free Church minister at Law in Airdrie and then at Kilmarnock Grange Church. And the nurture that he, and Ian’s mother Winnie, afforded their family of six was the sort that ingrained in the souls of their children a heritage rich in the virtues of faith, hope and love.

Ian himself has been an elder here since 1962: his daughters were both married here in this church and among the next generation again there were several baptised here.

Such a grounding in all of the tenets of faith went some way to ensuring that when troubles came – as troubles surely do – Ian would know where to turn and in whom he could finally trust. For Paul goes on, in the text of Philippians 4, to insist that when once we learn to unburden our cares on the Lord, then

"the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."

And thus it was so often here on a Sunday at worship that Ian would be found. Bedecked in his kilt, with a gleam in those stunning blue eyes, with a warm, gentle smile on his face, and reflecting – whatever the turmoil within – reflecting that peace of the Lord.

That note of peace runs through this letter the apostle wrote. Himself a man well on in years, acquainted with the pressures and the hardships of a life of dedicated service as he followed Jesus Christ, the man was now in prison as he wrote: but eager, always eager that those to whom he wrote should nonetheless themselves enjoy this peace that he had come to know.

"Finally," he writes (but the man is a preacher and he’s not really quite at the end!), "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you."

There’s a lifetime’s worth of living there in Ian which Paul’s great exhortation comprehends. So much that is true and noble and right and altogether worthy of our praise and admiration here today.

He was an extremely able man. Schooled in Airdrie first and then at Kilmarnock Academy, where he excelled indeed above all others as dux; he went on to attain a first class honours degree in Classics at Glasgow University.

All through his life his mind remained sharp, as those with whom he played in later life, in both the Chess and the Scrabble Clubs, would all be the first to acknowledge. He was glad to be able to use his mind; and keen to encourage others too, as his very ready willingness to teach the game of chess in local schools revealed.

He was, moreover, an extremely kind and generous man as well, not least within his family. For myself when I first came here I was struck by the quiet and self-effacing manner with which he cared for his brother’s widow, Isabel. And I know that such care and such kindness in Ian was replicated time and time again amongst his family and friends. Folk almost always warmed to him: and it was easy to see just why.

He was, of course, a man who was full of fun. Very often, indeed, in a mischievous, boyish way, with a twinkle that lit up his eyes and a laugh that was rich and infectious. He knew deep down, whatever the struggles he had – he knew deep down that life was there to be lived and its pleasures there to be known. He loved to be out on the hills, and enjoyed being able to climb Ben Lomond the day he was sixty five. And his children, in turn, dragged out with their Daddy from almost the day they could walk, discovered in time they were all of them fitter than most.

He was at heart a family man. Growing up as the eldest of six, I think he knew and understood just how special and important are the bonds of family love.

He’d first met Jean when, training for his service in Nigeria, he’d been on different courses in both London learning Ibo and at Oxford, too.

He’d joined the Scottish Dance Society and it was there that the two of them met. It was, I’m told, his lilting Ayrshire accent which attracted her, not least (if I recall aright) at some Burns’ Supper do where Ian was giving out the toast: and so potent was Ian’s speaking that Jean volunteered right there and then “I’m going to marry a man like that!”

Which, of course, she did. In fact, they married each other twice, I understand. On the same day. They would have been married in the St Columba’s Pont Street Church of Scotland: but the place had been bombed through the war and instead the marriage took place in St Saviours Church of England – though only after they were married first in a room which had been consecrated in St Columba’s Church house; because Ian’s mother, with presumably a rigorous Presbyterian zeal, insisted absolutely on a Church of Scotland service.

Whether that’s noble or right or pure or lovely or even remotely admirable I will not say: but it is true. And thinking on that brings a smile – and even a measure of peace – to both Jean and her children today.

For his children here today, for Elspeth and Judy (his far-travelled daughters), and his son-on-the doorstep Andy – for them and the in-laws and grandchildren too, for them he was more than a father: he was, I suspect, their hero, a wise, astute, and patriarchal figure who, defying all convention, was their counsellor and champion.

For he was, like all true characters, very much his own man. And he went about things his own way.

He had served in the war with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers out in India. And he was known to have stayed up all night as he stripped down equipment to sort out a problem himself and get the thing working again – for all that it earned him rebuke more than thanks, since he’d basically stepped out of line. But as I say, he was his own man and was happy to do things his way.

His way or not, though, Ian’s life was a lifetime of service. The eleven years that he and Jean spent early on in married life out in Nigeria, with Ian’s work in the Colonial Service as a local government officer [through a period which saw that country become independent in 1960] – those eleven years of service saw him honoured with an OBE.

Precisely for what in his time out there he was honoured is clothed to this day in a mist of some uncertainty. He built a bridge: he sorted out an ugly-looking villagers’ dispute: he quelled a local riot single-handedly, a riot that had all the likely makings of some major loss of life (including his): he taught the natives Scottish Country Dancing: and he fathered all his children there as well.

All of them major achievements – and no one’s entirely certain for just which of these the OBE honour was given!

Service lay at the heart of it all, whatever it was that he did. For returning home he joined the Scottish Office and served there, too, in the finance, housing and development departments.

A life-time full of service, to country, church and family.

And it comes as no surprise to me, as I hold in one hand the life that Ian lived and hold in the other the words of this letter of Paul – it comes as no surprise to me to find this servant of the risen Lord proceeds to underline –

"I can do all things through him who gives me strength."

And I want to conclude by exhorting you all, as together we think on Ian’s life – I want to conclude by exhorting you all to aspire to that sort of life. I want to insist that we settle, each one of us here, for nothing that’s short of the highest and best that God offers us all in his Son.

My God, wrote Paul, will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Jesus Christ.

Never settle for anything less than the best that is there for us all in the Lord Jesus Christ. Never opt for the path of a safe and a bland mediocrity.

You were made for a life of service. You were made for a life of adventure. You were made to aspire for the heights.

And whatever the struggles, whatever the problems, whatever the sorrows that path to the heights will entail, be certain of this all your days – my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Jesus Christ.

All your needs. Forgiveness when you fall and fail. Renewal when you falter and grow weary on life’s path. Comfort when you sorrow. Courage when you tremble. Guidance all the way.

And at the last, in face of death itself, the promise of a resurrection day.
My God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Jesus Christ.

It is altogether fitting that Ian was laid to rest clothed in his pyjamas, with his much-loved golden dressing-gown on top.

For Christians merely sleep. And one day we shall wake with all the saints, and rise, with crowns as well as gowns of gold, to gather round the throne of our great Saviour God, and enter into that unending life that is at last the freedom and the fulness for which we all have longed.

"To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen"