Poetry of the Passion 3: Lead Me to Calvary

Hunt light
I was standing in the rain on a Saturday afternoon in Law Village, Lanarkshire. I was 17 years of age. I had just for the first time told the story of how I had met Jesus a couple of weeks earlier – I gave my testimony, told how my story and the Gospel story coincided. And how those two stories intersected in an encounter between a confused and uncertain teenager and One who offered gift and demand, and all the risks attendant on making life meaningful. I had written it all out carefully with a Woolworth's cheap fountain pen, in royal blue ink – and it was raining. The paper was sodden, the ink had run, my words illegible, and I was left with a battery powered megaphone to tell anyone who was listening that Jesus had changed my life, that he had died for me and I had now given my life to Him. I gave testimony – in the rain – without notes, and with a heart thumping from either terror or joy, and probably both.

I was with several other Christians, including two Faith Mission pilgrims. In the 1960's Faith Mission Pilgrims provided a first-hand opportunity to encounter experiential Evangelicalism in which evangelism was primary and the approach utterly anti-cultural in its oddity. Those wonderful people lived for evangelism, and tried to live by the Gospel, and at the time I met them I regarded them with awe and a puzzled admiration. They asked me to tell others what the Lord had done for me. So I did.

That afternoon I handed the megaphone back to Margaret (whose large wide-margin RSV Bible I still have, cherish and use, as the gift she later passed on when I started training for ministry), and Margaret decided it was time to sing. Now in those days Law Village wasn't a place where many people sang in the streets on a Saturday afternoon – late Saturday night, yes, but not a wet and windy weekend 2.o'clock ad hoc Gospel sing song, with accordion and solo female voice. The song and its singing acted like a spiritual seal on what I'd tried to say, and what I so deeply felt but hadn't discovered the words and ideas to fully grasp.

The words weren't the best poetry in the world – and Margaret wasn't the best singer in the world, and didn't claim to be. But this Holy Week, in honour of Faith Mission Pilgrims like Margaret, whose courage and resilience remains for me an inspiration, I wanted to recall those words. And to recall too that first act of public testimony from a converted teenager. That the song also happens to have been one of my mother's favourites, simply makes it more poignant, and gives it even deeper inner resonances. I've long reserved space for sentimental verse and song as an essential element in a balanced diet of spiritual health foods! Not all hymns need to be good poetry – sometimes it's enough that they are genuine prayers. And this was prayer, pure, simple and to the point, when Margaret sang it that dreich Saturday afternoon.

GNB Gethsemane
 

Lead Me to Calvary

King of my life, I crown Thee now,
Thine shalt the glory be;
Lest I forget Thy thorn crowned brow,
Lead me to Calvary.

Refrain

Lest I forget Gethsemane,
Lest I forget Thine agony;
Lest I forget Thy love for me,
Lead me to Calvary.

Show me the tomb where Thou wast laid,
Tenderly mourned and wept;
Angels in robes of light arrayed
Guarded Thee whilst Thou slept.

Refrain

Let me like Mary, through the gloom,
Come with a gift to Thee;
Show to me now the empty tomb,
Lead me to Calvary.

Refrain

May I be willing, Lord, to bear
Daily my cross for Thee;
Even Thy cup of grief to share,
Thou hast borne all for me.

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