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Yesterday walking along the River Don the ducks were dancing. This is the perichoretic synchronised waltz performed at olympic sport level.

On a whim, I liked the sharp yellow and sharp grass against the blurred background of the river.

Then I saw the fabled ugly duckling, a tweenage swan wondering why it was such a big lumbering colourless bag of flurff. I was wishing I could enhance its self-esteem, and tell it " But you are beautiful" Not true though, but some day it will – here's the next photo of mum to prove it. Keep preening cygnet face, some day like your mum you'll see yourself reflected in the water and think "Oh ya beauty!"

Ecclesiastes 3.11 – "God has made everything beautiful in its time…." Yesterday was a good day.

"The violin, through the serene clarity of its song,helps to keep our
bearings in the storm, as a light in the night, a compass in the
tempest, it shows us a way to a haven of sincerity and respect."Yehudi Menuhin

On a summer holiday in the 1970's my holiday read was Yehudi Menuhin's autobiography, Unfinished Journey. I had recently been given my first Classical LP, from Sheila, Brahms Violin Concerto. There are occasions in life when a new experience becomes a sort of epiphany, a glimpse of horizons never imagined, a listening that re-attune our ears to the beauty of sound, emotional responses we can neither control nor would ever want to, and a conviction of mind immediately recognised as life-changing – my first hearing of the Brahms Violin Concerto was each of these.

Yesterday on Classic FM I heard the newest CD of Brahms Violin Concerto, the finale, which still lifts me beyond wherever I am to a more hopeful place, just as the second movement combines for me sense of compassionate presence that both cares and teaches to care. Mind you, lest this becomes too much, the first bars of that second movement also remind me of the first line of Nice One Cyril, nice one Son!

Amongst the important legacies Yehudi Menuhin lefts the world was his passionate belief that music was a midwife of peace, a humanising surrender of self interest to something higher, a gift from God with the power to express our highest hopes, deepest tragedies, most far reaching hopes and most all embracing loves.

Menuhin's faith in music, and use of his own influence through his music, was given memorable and forthright expression in 1991 when he was honoured by Israel and addressed the Knessett in his acceptance speech:

This wasteful governing by fear, by contempt for the basic dignities of
life, this steady asphyxiation of a dependent people, should be the very
last means to be adopted by those who themselves know too well the
awful significance, the unforgettable suffering of such an existence. It
is unworthy of my great people, the Jews, who have striven to abide by a
code of moral rectitude for some 5,000 years, who can create and
achieve a society for themselves such as we see around us but can yet
deny the sharing of its great qualities and benefits to those dwelling
amongst them.

There is greatness in such words, in such outspoken critique of his own people, and in such aspirations for a world made more hospitable, safe and humane. The man who played to the survivors of Belsen, and who absorbed hostile criticism for playing under Furtwangler in Berlin after World War II, pointing out that Furtwangler had remained in Germany throughout the entire Nazi period and had helped a number of Jewish people to escape capture, such a man spoke with a different kind of moral authority. Human greatness is an elusive and ambiguous value – but for me persitent peacemaking, joyful music making and fearless defence of the humanity of others are amongst the more obvious criteria.

Yesterday I was at one of my favourite Baptist places in the North East. I wanted to show some slides of our holiday as part of the all age worship and thought I'd introduce it by asking someone to tell me the meaning of the word metaphor. Thought we'd do some metaphorical theology at Sunday School level. One brave late primary grammarian gave me just the right answer: "It's something that's a bit like something else, but not the same as it." Oh yes – couldn't have said it better myself.

Then we looked at photos of Scheihallion – immovable and always there, a bit like God, but not the same as.

Next we looked at a red legged partridge with its chicks – solicitous, gathering them, protecting them from danger, a bit like God, that red legged partridge, but not the same as.

Finally a photo of nothing but flowers, hundreds of them – fragile, beautiful, transient, a  bit like human beings, but not the same as – though God who is always there, and who cares for and comes close to, makes them beautiful, so how much more will he care for human beings who are worth so much more.

This metaphorical theology thing works OK so long as we remember God isn't a mountain, a partridge or a flower arranger. But God is rather permanent, eternally so; God is love that risks hurt for love of human beings, in Christ demonstrably so; and God is an artistic genius who creates beauty just for the sake of it, inexhaustibly so. And Gos is so much more.

The red legged partridge knows how to lead its chicks into camouflage – how many can you see in the photo? Clever things partridges – and that too is a bit like God!!!

Three posts ago I reported the loss of Denise Levertov's little gem of a book, The Stream and the Saphhire. It went missing on holiday and I was intending to replace it. But my book has returned. It appeared on my desk while I was away at College. I'd like to suggest this was a miracle, an act of gracious providence, God in His mercy making good heartfelt loss, evidence that in the life of faith God intervenes on a daily basis with blessings unlooked for. Now I believe all of these possibilities.

The book which I left on a sun lounge had been picked up by Sheila and put for safe-keeping in her bag – I did say it was a small book. On second thoughts, Sheila found and retrieved my book, graciously looked after it, returned it and made good my heartfelt loss, and presented me with an unlooked for blessing. So my miracle, God's gracious providence, God's mercy in looking after me, and daily unlooked for blessings all coincide in Sheila. 

Living in Aberdeen it is incumbent to be aware of the theological minds that have graced this city. Two of them come together in 1970, in a wee book called P T Forsyth:Per Crucem ad Lucem, written by the Professor of New Testament and former Master of Christ's College, A M Hunter. What makes this brief study of Forsyth so good is the coincidence of minds and sympathy of spirit of two men who could be called liberal evangelicals. Separated by two or three generations they were theologians of the New Testament Gospel, and Hunter had clearly found a kindred heart in the writings of Forsyth.

At one point Hunter builds boldly on Forsyth's insistence that growth in holiness is God's work not ours. "The witness of the Spirit in our hearts is 'Christ's perpetual interpretation of his own work as gospel. The Spirit lights the Bible, leads the church, anoints the ministry, and all by a constant rejuvenation of the gospel and its power to create, criticize and create anew".

Hunter goes on: "Sanctification is not self-culture….Paul did not consecrate himself to his great work. He obeyed a call and found his sanctification – his growth in grace – in the pursuit of his ministry. So we too are sanctified when we are on our Saviour's business. Growth in grace comes not by working at it but by passing ever more deeply into self-forgetfulness – into the grace, the cross and the service of Christ."

And for added emphasis here is Forsyth again, sounding like one of the magisterial Puritans he admired, Thomas Goodwin: "Seek first for the Kingdom and sanctification will be added; care for Christ and he will take care of your soul; sail by the Cross and you will sail into holiness."

Aye, those Aberdeen theologians of the Gospel knew what, and Who, they were talking about. And they were way too wise as pastoral theologians, and shrewd as psychologists to tolerate the me, me, me self-help spirituality that is often implicated in our programmatic activism as we try to make happen what in the end, and the beginning, is grace, gift and mercy.

To lose one book is careless; to lose two is culpable; to lose two books by the same author is unpardonable; to lose two books by Denise Levertov is expensive – because I will replace them!

Conversations with Denise Levertov was left on a train on the way back from and External Examiners Board. The Stream and the Sapphire, her collected religious poetry is now available for whoever follows us into the accommodation where we recently had a holiday. (Photo taken on said holiday) If they pick it up and read it, then they will discover one of the sharpest most compassionate spirits in contemporary poetry; they will hear a voice that beckons them into deeper water, that urges them to look and see a bigger sky, that tugs at those nameless longings another reat writer described as God putting eternity in our hearts. So I've just re-ordered it and rather than writing the abandoned copy off, I pray a blessing on the book and whoever reads it. It has been a balm in Gilead for me, and a pocket companion who seldom fails to say the right thing.

Here's a quotation I wrote down in a wee journal I kept a few holidays ago – it encouraged me to write prayers of intercession for worship that both saw, and felt and touched the hurts and wounds of the world:

A poetry articulating the dreads and horrors of our time is necessary in
order to make readers understand what is happening, really understand
it, not just know about it but feel it: and should be accompanied by a
willingness on the part of those who write it to take additional action
towards stopping the great miseries which they record.

"additional action
towards stopping the great miseries which they record" – a definition of and justification for intercessory prayer, perhaps?

This afternoon goes down as one of the best sporting days of my life. Maybe best of them all for feel good factor!

Home grown excellence, huge commitment, an enigmatic but brilliant coach, the love of a nation, and a match that takes tennis to different levels of strength, emotional resilience and sheer imposition of will on ball and opponent.

Accompanied by roast beef sandwiches, strawberries with cream and ice cream, and a box of hand made chocolates, a gift from a grateful neighbour whose garden I did gladly dig!

It's been a great day 🙂

Look at the flowers of the field… not even Solomon in all his glory….if your Heavenly Father so clothes the flowers….how much more you!

Jesus at his most naive –

Lord grant us just enough naivete to help cancel our cynicism, and turn trepidation to trust.

"Death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered…" A whole biblical symphony of resolute hopefulness, risk-taking trust, imaginative thoughtfulness and not least redemptive peace-making surrounds those words with their own alternative-sounding reality. The love of God, of which we so often speak in terms that are glib, even unthinking, or exclusive, so often lacks the notes of holiness, mercy, justice and judgement. Divine love wins by sacrifice, overcomes by surrender, redeems by self-giving, but in the end is a love that is free and confers freedom, that is powerful but not overpowering, and that is holy and reaches out to hallow and sanctify all that falls short of the glory of God.

All of this was in mind when I wrote yesterday of Stuart Townend's song and the way his words capture huge vistas of biblical vision and Gospel hope. I've just finished a book of essays on the love of God, Nothing Greater, Nothing Better. Theological Essays on the Love of God. The subtitle is accurate, the main title sounds like a bad line from a praise song, but the essays with only one or two exceptions are telling theological, at times pastoral or dogmatic, reflections on Divine love.I am entirely partial, but the essay that is standout for me is by my Doktovater David Fergusson, entitled, "Will the Love of God Finally Triumph".

Here in a short essay is an articulated theology of God's love that recognises the nature of love as that which confers freedom because love's essence is relational freedom in which lover and beloved give and respond in grateful commitment and chosen joy. Compelled love is oppression; manipulative love is destructive; love cannot be deterministic and remain love. One of the greatest books ever on the love of God (I seldom use such exaggerated superlatives) is W H Vanstone's Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense. Its sub-title, The Response of Being to the Love of God. That book has provided me with a generous but honest vocabulary about love – precarious, out-going and out-giving, passionate, investment, self-donation, no guaranteed outcome, waiting; and Vanstone gathered much of that conceptuality into one of the finest hymns on the love of God that I know, Morning Glory, Starlit Sky.

Back to Fergusson – I detect in Fergusson's critique of Barth's universalist tendency that same passionate acknowledgement that the love of God is not sentimental surrender to wishful thinking, nor is God's love a trawler net that hauls all human beings into the kingdom choiceless, and regardless of who and what in the end they choose to be and do with the gift of life. The voice of God is consistent with the love of God, 'I have set before you life and death, therefore choose life.'Love dies under coercion, and love lives always with the possibility of rejection – the Divine love defines love and though the love of God is unending, there will always be the possibility and reality of those whose choice is rejection, a final self-determining no.

A good example of David Fergusson's theological instincts is when he puts in their place, those wistful non-universalists who desperately wish universalism was true but regrettably cannot make it so:

Such remarks are puzzling. Are we saying that  God's final scheme is undesirable? Are we even suggesting that our own moral preferences are somehow better than God's? Can we claim to be evangelical if we hold that it would be good for universalism while also lamenting wistfully that this is not what God has on offer? There is a good dominical response to this: "If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your
children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to
those who ask him!" Matt. 7:11

All of which brings me back to Stuart Townend's See What a Morning. What gives the hymn its theological, pastoral and liturgical power is the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus in the way Christians see the world. Love crucified is risen; love survives the violent attempts at its extinction; life says no to death; finality does not rest with despair but with hope; against the closing down of all possibilities, the love of God holds open possibilities infinite and eternal; and love remains love, the free offer of gift and the invitation to response in that same freedom.

"To know the love of God that is beyond knowledge", indeed the entire doxological sections of Paul's Ephesians, is one of the great theological limiters on our intellectual hubris – even what we know is partial, finite, seeing through a glass darkly. We lack words and concepts, ideas and arguments; our imagination and vision and mental stretch and emotional range are inadequate to a different and vaster reality. 

A closing challenge from Fergusson: "If choices are made only when made in the full knowledge of God's love in Christ, it is in the church that the burden of human responsibility is greatest".

The photo is of Schiehallion, early morning, before we climbed it. Shrouded in mystery, much of it obscured but there in all its solid reality, waiting to be climbed but not conquered, providing a standpoint from which to view the world, and remember that this ancient mountain puts us firmly, finally, and faithfully, in our place!