Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Official Report
740KB pdf
Time for Reflection
The first item of business this afternoon is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader is the Rev Dr Ian Wills, a senior pastor in the Church of the Nazarene in Glasgow.
The Rev Dr Ian Wills (Senior Pastor, Church of the Nazarene, Glasgow)
Assuming that the Scottish Parliament continues to host time for reflection on a Wednesday for the next 400 years, I will be the first of only 15 to address the chamber in this capacity on a leap day. For a moment, this unique privilege offers me a vain and futile sense of my own importance, which I confess is unbecoming of a man of the cloth.
However, today represents a reality that we must come to accept: that we are all subjects of, and governed by, systems, structures, and schemes that are far greater than our human minds can comprehend or human endeavour can change. We create extra days in our calendars to keep in tune with nature’s laws, lest we become out of sync. In the end, we find ourselves humbly submitting to those higher ways and that higher power. We surrender to their superiority, living our lives in line with them.
Scotland’s environment bears glorious witness to such natural systems that govern our life, testimony to the creative power of something or someone beyond our ken. Some of our best academic research and entrepreneurial creativity is defined by that reality. Whether we are discovering the potential of Scotland’s natural resources, harnessing the power of its wind and waves or writing about its abundant beauty and generous hospitality, we do so with thankful humility, careful responsibility and a sense of our real place in this awesome world.
Scotland provides us with an environment that we cannot and would not change—except, perhaps, when attempting a summer barbecue. Yet, in submission to her and in awe of her, we strive to learn from her, to live from her power and to love amidst her beauty and hospitality.
We are all subjects of a greater way, and privileged stewards of its bounty. There is a sovereignty that lives above our temporary rule and reign, a non-human, yet strangely personal sovereignty with whom we already work, to whom we inevitably find ourselves submitting. His ways may be higher, greater, but they are infinitely hospitable, loving, a reality that caused an ancient to write:
“When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you set in place, what is humanity that you are mindful of them, that you care for them?”
Our national history and heritage has been forged under such wisdom and faith, from our early Celtic roots. They remind us that we do not struggle against a hostile creator, but, rather, that we are invited to walk with a hospitable saviour.