The power of the Creator is visible in the Bass Rock
Food for Thought column by Rev Sandy Sutherland
Most visitors to the Bass Rock fly in – I went by fishing boat!
Most visitors to the Bass eat fish – I had a pork pie and a packet of crisps. Most visitors to the Rock stay for about 20 weeks – I stayed for three hours.
Most visitors to this jewel in Scotland’s Firth of Forth have no sense of history – I shed a tear as I stood there and thought on those who were imprisoned in this Scottish Alcatraz where many religious and political prisoners died in its dungeons.
Most visitors to this 107 metres high trachyte plug with its three sides of sheer cliff arrive with no luggage—I had a rucksack, binoculars, tripod, cameras and three layers of clothing.
Most visitors land on this rocky stack, with its 105-metre tunnel, free of charge – my passage cost £105.
Most visitors are fully equipped for life on the edge—I too came fully equipped wearing new trekking boots and the latest in digital camera technology; but (even with wearing the compulsory lifebelt) I kept as far away from the edge as possible!
The strange thing is that most visitors to this once island-prison-garrison, in spite of having no luggage, do self-catering! In fact these visitors consume 200 tons of fish every day; travelling as far as 330 miles to find it.
Most visitors to this wilderness paradise are, as the book of Genesis 1:20 puts it, “after their kind” for they are birds – gannets. Genesis further informs us that when God created man “male and female”, He did so in His own image and not “after their kind”. To be created in the image of God includes having characteristics such as “righteousness” and “knowledge”. Man has knowledge and he hungers for more knowledge.
It was on the Bass Rock that ornithologists first studied the northern gannet during the 19th century; even the species’ scientific name Sula Bassana partly reflects this bird’s long association with this island.
Sir David Attenborough describing this largest single rock colony (some 120,000 nesting pairs—St Kilda has more birds but spread out over three stacks) as “one of the 12 wildlife wonders of the world”.
There is a double sense of wonder for the Christian because not only is there the common experience of awe at viewing this spectacular spectacle of the creation, but there is the example of the unsuppressed greatness of the Creator.
While one does not need to be standing on this seven-acre, round volcanic rock, surrounded by the deep blue sea, under the roof of the cosmos, in the company of chattering “throat gapping” gannets, to consider one’s little self under the heavens; one is, nevertheless, arrested, in this ornithological paradise, to wonder and exclaim with the psalmist: What is man that you, O Lord, are mindful of him.
Yet, while parts of the present creation may be considered a paradise, that same paradise may be a prison for the righteous; but the final abode for God’s people will have no imprisonment and God will live with them—paradise restored and enhanced!
Surely too, in the new creation, there will still be a thirst for more knowledge, a knowledge that will continue to fill God’s people with awesome wonder, praise and adoration – not for the creation but for the Creator: God forever praised!
Rev Sandy Sutherland is a retired Free Church minister living in Brora.