Expect to find God ‘in everything’
Of the three sisters, the eldest, Sarah, who was “the very quietest, the very shyest”, was the least likely to end up in a very public role.
Yet here she is, talking with me in her office, the Provost of St Andrew’s Cathedral Inverness, responsible for all aspects of the cathedral’s work and worship.
Faith in God has been a constant in Sarah Murray’s life since her childhood on the Isle of Wight, though it wasn’t to the forefront in her years as a young adult.
She and her first husband Bruce came north to manage the Sutherland Arms Hotel in Golspie.
Tragically he died following an accident in 2001 and Sarah and their young son received massive support and kindness from folk at St Andrews Scottish Episcopal Church in Tain.
She envisages Inverness Cathedral as, similarly “an open and welcoming space for everybody – a place where people can gather to bring all sorts of things from celebration to doubts and fears and worries.” And perhaps to meet God, for she believes God is to be found “in everything.”
Sarah is very clear that in saying this Christians are not conjuring meaning out of thin air. God encounters us.
Sleepless with sorrow following her bereavement the young widow prayed and read the Bible and over time heard in her heart “God’s voice speaking to me”.
And she sensed the comforting divine whisper in the lyrics of some of the pop songs she listened to at that time.
“I suppose I was listening through that lens,” she reflects. “God is always present. It’s us who decide whether we come intentionally into God’s presence.”
God is to be found, she suggests, if we look through the lens of expectancy.
Sarah tells me she was hesitant about embarking on theological training, despite an irresistible sense of calling to ministry.
As a “kinesthetic learner”, learning through symbols, movement and experience rather than a purely word-based approach she finds exams challenging.
She needn’t have worried, achieving a degree from Aberdeen University.
But it struck me how appropriate the Episcopal tradition is, with icons and symbols, movement and incense, for kinesthetic leaners.
As we take up the lens of expectancy God meets us through our own learning style, our own distinctives.
Reading the story of Jesus’s resurrection reminds Sarah that “life after death is not simply something in the forever. We can have it here, now.”
She has a zest for life which is not fully explained by her remarriage two decades ago to Morgan, by her pride in her son, or by job satisfaction.
It’s a zest rooted in the sheer joy of connection with the God who is source of all life, whose cathedral is the entire cosmos.