April 2020 Magazine

…and farewell to
Jim Cutler
Our past Locum
Bewildered, Jewish exiles, far away in Babylon, were weary and deeply
homesick. Jerusalem was a distant dream; the daily reality was harsh and alien.
They wept as they remembered their country. Their feelings had been trampled
on by insensitive captors. They felt abandoned. Looking back towards home,
longing to return, the Psalmist crystallises their feelings in a passionate poem
of despair and anger. Read it in Psalm 137.
Overwhelmed by despair, they can’t even worship. “How could we sing the
Lord’s song in a strange land?” he asks.
Of course, part of the problem was a misunderstanding of the nature of their
God. In common with other nations of their time, they saw God as a national
figure, someone whose presence and power was somehow limited to his own
territory. They found it hard to “sing the Lord’s song” because they thought he
was far away in Jerusalem; they thought themselves abandoned, alone and
helpless.
It’s easy to feel that way when trouble strikes. We wall ourselves in behind our
misery and, because our vision has so narrowed, we can’t see or feel God’s
presence.
Many people, I suppose feel the same way when Easter comes around. How
can God be there when he allowed his Son to be nailed to a tree? This one and
that one arises to be our national hero, yet we can’t even win consistently on
the Rugby field or Football field.
Yet God is still there, and he still cares. We may feel estranged and lost, in a
place we don’t know, but take comfort: ‘There is no strange land to God.’
Everywhere is home. His love, compassion and healing are at work wherever
we are.
Reach out – he is there.
By the time you receive this I will have left Eddleston with Peebles: Old Parish
Churches. I will no longer be your Locum Minister. I have enjoyed my time with
you although time didn’t allow me to get to know you better. I hope you
enjoyed having me and not just my silly little stories.
I had hoped to do quite a lot of visiting, but alas with the number of funerals
to attend to, I’m afraid congregational visiting had to take second place. I’m
sorry about that.
In case you’re wondering, I’m not going to be Locum Minister anywhere else. I
retired and moved to Peebles almost 9 years ago and I find that I have to retire
again.