Message of hope remains as true as the day it was spoken

Food for Thought column by retired Free Church minister Rev Sandy Sutherland, Brora.

I’m sure those of us who are of a certain age have a fondness for recalling days of old and rehearsing choice sayings gleaned from our village “characters”.

Take, for example, the Brora woman who said: “that east wind is cold no matter what direction it is coming from!” Who wouldn’t agree? But what of the Brora man who, on being asked if he did anything significant in his life, answered: “I have been all over the world and many other places besides!”?

This statement came to mind when I recently read The Truth about St Kilda:An Islander’s Memoir, where Donald John Gillies recalls the story he heard a Church of Scotland minister tell of a grandfather who, in gathering round his three grandchildren, told them he had been to many places in the world: America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand…and now he was ready to go to many other wonderful places. The grandchildren were all ears “where can grandad be going now?” Grandad continued, “When I pass from this world to the next I expect to see that beautiful land that is fairer than day and by faith we can see it afar”.

Donald John Gillies was born in St Kilda in 1901 and left in 1924 six years prior to the island’s evacuation 90 years ago this year. After undertaking studies at the Bible Institute in Glasgow and a course to improve his English (Gaelic being his first language), he became a student of the Presbyterian Church of Canada in 1927 and was ordained in Carberry, Manitoba in 1933.

During the war years, as an army chaplain, and later with his wife Lilian, he travelled extensively visiting Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Europe. Donald, thereby, in the final paragraph of his memoir, parallels his travelling and his hope with the faith of that grandad who, wrote Donald: “relayed that magnificent message of hope which is as true today as the day it was spoken many, many years ago.”

Many, many years ago Abraham, by faith, saw the heavenly country and the City of God. Moses, by faith, saw Him who is invisible. The beloved disciple John saw the New Jerusalem. The apostle Paul saw the Third Heaven.

These and other individuals such as Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David and Samuel were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things God promised them when they were still in this world but instead they saw them from afar. They were each longing for a better country—a heavenly one.

Faith in the biblical promises of God, such as a new heaven and earth with no more tears, and in God having the power to deliver His promises enables the faithful to not only see the world around them but to see and, in a manner of speaking, travel to what God has revealed of what is yet to be.

Not everyone can say with that Brora man or with Donald John Gillies that they have travelled all over the world but every Christian should be able to say that by faith they have seen the heavenly country, the City of God and an eternity of new discovery. As our professor of systematic theology put it: “There will never be a day [not even in eternity] when God will say: ‘Now you know it all, now you know enough’ ”.

True faith increases our vision—“many other places besides”— God has revealed things that are out of this world no matter what direction the wind is coming from.

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