Glory be to God on high.

On Christmas Eve in the afternoon, between preparing for services and taking them, we went for a walk up in Colsterdale.

The pictures are of the old Chapel, a farmer told me it had also served as a school room and now did service as a barn. It put me in mind of the phrase 'Glory be to God on high', from the Christmas story. Partly I suppose because it was Christmas Eve and partly because the chapel was built to the glory of God and sits splendidly on high.

I did wonder for a moment if the disuse and decay of the place meant it no longer spoke of that glory, but it did. The cold, time worn stones testified to a faithful gathering of living stones that once made the place sing, and that song still faintly echoed in these broken remnants of worship and community.

Indeed, I realised that the temporality of the place spoke by contrast to me of the eternal glory of God. We worship the eternal standing unsteady on the shifting sands of time. Even the landscape of the dale which seems to me to speak so eloquently of our Creator God and His changelessness is passing.

In Jesus Christ eternity stepped into time. The one through whom the rock and earth of the dale was created, he whom the builders of the chapel sang in joyful and solemn hymnody, he subjected himself to time and decay.

So be it, Lord; Thy throne shall never, Like earth’s proud empires, pass away: Thy kingdom stands, and grows forever, Till all Thy creatures own Thy sway.