'snapshots' from a weekend on the road

Here are some 'snapshots' from the last few days 'on the road'.

Friday. Another memorable wedding.

The sun shone - despite the forecast of rain. And that, again, seemed like a sign of God's defiant grace. More, by far, than we might have ever expected.

The whole occasion was steeped in God's grace and goodness. Palpable stuff. Everyone present was conscious the Lord was there. Surely.

The couple themselves had sought God's will and wanted to honour him. People had prayed and sought the blessing of God.

And he drenched the day in his grace. Wonderful.

Saturday. Off up north.

Traffic on the main trunk road to the north, the A9, is slow on a summer Saturday. Saturday is 'change-over' day during the holiday season: the start and end of the letting week. Everyone's out on the roads, either coming or going.

I'm wondering more and more if we're not ourselves at a kind of 'change-over' day in the course of our nation's history. Spiritually, rather than politically. It can be frustrating, slow and demanding.

It's a fair old distance and a good long time. But I get up to my destination - a B & B way out on Strathy Point - in reasonable time.

Strathy Point juts out into the Pentland Firth. It looks on the map as if it's about right in the centre of the northern coast, and the most northerly point of the Scottish mainland. It feels like I'm out at the extremities and I'm wondering if there's significance in the Lord taking me up to this furthest point.

Patsy MacAskill's a marvelous host. There's a lovely, warm welcome for a total stranger, with a cup of coffee and a plateful of home-baking. I've a room to myself - which is just as well since I've a load of preparation still to do.

Sunday. Along the coast to Tongue and Melness.

The early morning mist and rain soon lifts, and I've ample time to tour the area, trying to get a feel for the place and for what the Lord is doing there.

A causeway stretches out across the Kyle and a bridge then links the two communities. Melness and Tongue. Two congregations, first linked, then latterly united.

The causeway and the bridge are a picture of the reconciling grace of God, a picture of the work to which Stewart has been called. Building bridges to unite a people in Christ.

And building bridges, too, over which, by his holy Spirit, the Lord himself may come - in power, in grace, in love.

Fittingly, it's a united service at Melness. There are folk from Tongue, and folk from the various scattered settlements along the strip of land which is loosely termed Melness. There are folk who've stayed on from Stewart's Ordination and Induction on Friday night - folk who were up to support him at this time and who've made the trip a holiday. And there are family and visitors, too.

A fair old mix of people. And a wonderful spirit of worship. The Lord is present in power. People find themselves being spoken to. It's an auspicious start for the ministry Stewart and Liz will be exercising through these coming months.

It's after 5pm by the time I leave the manse at Tongue and wend my way back down through Lairg and Bonar Bridge, to stay for the night with a friend from school whom I haven't seen for years.

He's thrilled to see me - and the feeling is very much mutual. He takes me along to a party he's been at himself, celebrating the 60th birthday of a farmer friend a couple of miles down the road. I meet a whole big crowd of folk whom I haven't seen for maybe 30 years or more.

It's great to pick up from where we left off, way back in the days when I was still at school and on into my student days. I worked on the farms up there, and we shared in all sorts of adventures. It's a trip down memory lane for us all.

But it feels as well like the Lord is the one who is orchestrating this 'friends re-united'. There's something going on in my being there.

Monday. We'd chatted a while through the evening last night. The friend with whom I was staying had rung another guy with whom I used to chum around a lot back then. He's that keen to catch up with me that he's along at the house this morning before it's even 7.30am.

An early start, and a couple of hours worth of chat over coffee. He's genuinely pleased to see me again. And I'm as pleased myself. It's almost as if the dimension of life for which I stand is one this man is seeking. As if he somehow needs this sort of contact with myself.

Or, more to the point, with the Lord.

It's 37 years, he says, since he last saw me. He hasn't changed a bit. At least, I'd have recognised him straightaway if I'd met him walking down the street.

It's an interesting experience. The Lord once again making connections: picking up on these threads from long, long ago and starting to weave something with them.

I've a good long time to think about it all on the journey back, of course. Re-tracing my steps back down the A9.

The Lord is pulling the strings. It feels like the start of a whole different era in terms of what the Lord is doing. As if the Lord is tying all sorts of knots.

Not just that 'tying the knot' at the wedding way back on Friday afternoon. Not just that 'tying the knot' as minister and congregation are joined in the work to which they're called.

But the Lord picking up all sorts of these threads from the past, and begining to pull them all together again. Completing the circle in some sort of way. Concluding what long since he'd started.

Whatever it is that he's doing in these days, the Lord is definitely now out on the road.