Plenary, 06 Nov 2002
Meeting date: Wednesday, November 6, 2002
Official Report
425KB pdf
Time for Reflection
Our time for reflection leader this week is the Reverend Moira MacCormick, minister at Buchlyvie and Gartmore.
The Reverend Moira MacCormick (Killearn Kirk, Buchlyvie):
I begin this meditation with a quotation from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran, where he speaks about children. He says:
"You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows might go swift and far. Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness: for even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He also loves the bow that is stable."
Over the past hundreds of millions years since humanity began to develop its God-given life, we have become men and women with incredible brain power and ingenuity. From discovering the basic ability to create fire and so to keep warm, we have progressed to the stage where we are able to travel to the moon and, no doubt, eventually beyond that.
One of the greatest gifts that humanity has been given is the gift of free will—the ability to make decisions for right or wrong, for good or ill. The creator who gave humanity that wonderful gift gave it in the earnest hope that all his children would learn that the best way for everyone to live was his way of love.
Throughout all the decades, centuries and millennia, the divine bowman has sent forth living arrows, but in all that time only one man has been able to live the perfect life of love, care and consideration for others, along with obedience to the one who had created him. That was the man Jesus. Because of that, the other side of human nature came to the fore, and he was nailed to a cross 2,000 years ago.
As we look around our world today, we cannot help but feel that many of the arrows that have been sent out have become crooked because they have used their God-given free will to go their own way, rather than in the direction in which they were sent.
In exactly seven weeks today, we will celebrate Christmas, the day when we remember the birth of the prince of peace; the one arrow that stayed straight and true right to the end. As we approach that time of year, perhaps we should look at ourselves to see honestly whether we have kept our flight straight and true since it left the bow of the God who is the father of all his children everywhere.