Lessons From The Memories Of England – With Applications Series

LESSONS FROM THE MEMORIES OF ENGLAND – WITH APPLICATIONS

This is a message/talk that best needs photos or data projector material, but you have to imagine the scenes and a few of them you can look up on line for the photos.

When you are in another country so many things can be different. The culture could be vastly strange but new views and scenery and history are all different. You know I like photography so I suppose my eye is trained to notice things of photographic interest. This happened a lot on my three visits to England where I was doing some biblical teaching in Boston, the second biggest town in Lincolnshire. My hosts were very kind and when time permitted, visited places that I found fascinating. All those scenes are fixed in my mind.

I wish to recall some of those memories and views in the photos you will see, but not on this written site as photos can’t be displayed. I like to take natural things like animals, nature, and develop lessons from them. For those who live in England and might be reading this, you may think, “There is not much of interest in those places I will talk about.” I can understand your saying that as you are used to these things. If you visited Australia and went to the outback and you were driving on some of these rough gravel, dusty bush roads and had half a dozen emus running parallel to the vehicle for some time, you would be fascinated but when it is rather common, then it is matter of fact.

Emus can run at 50 km/hour (31 miles/hour). You can also get the red kangaroo running beside the vehicle, and when startled it can do 70 km/hour (43 miles/hour) for a long distance. However they are a great danger because without warning they can veer to the side right in front of the vehicle. A fully grown red kangaroo can do considerable damage to any vehicle when hit.

Anyway I shall begin.

[1]. THE CHURCH WITH THE CROOKED SPIRE

The twisted spire on this church has become quite a landmark. The church is Chesterfield's parish church of St Mary and All Saints in Derbyshire. The 13th century twisted spire of 228 feet leans over 9 feet from the vertical. Some say the reason for the crookedness is that builders used green timbers, which warped over time. Over 32 tonnes of lead tiles covered the wood on the spire and this is what probably warped the shape.

There is a lesson contained in that shape. There is not one of us who is not misshapen and warped since birth. The bible says we were born that way. David mentions {{Psalm 51:5 “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.”}} Yes, even that innocent looking, helpless baby is a sin carrier and as it grows up, it will twist more and more under the leaden load of sin.

That is what we all are – crooked individuals. Sin warps minds and twists people’s natures, some a lot more than others. We all carry the old sin nature which the bible calls “the natural man”.

There is nothing we can do about it. We can’t fix ourselves, no more than the crooked spire can fix itself. Solomon wrote this – {{Ecclesiastes 1:15 “What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking, cannot be counted.”}} There we have it. Left to our own devices we can do nothing about our reprobate state.

Efforts have been made to brace up that spire and do what can be done in support, but to fix it properly, you need to go back to the original builders and rectify the problem. Of course they are not around from the 13th century.

There is a Builder we need to go to, in our lives, to fix our problem. He is the One who made us, our Creator. He can straighten the crooked – {{Isaiah 40:3 “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.”}} (KJV) and {{“Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.”}} (ESV).

Before we finish this one, there is a serious verse in Isaiah to look at – {{Isaiah 52:14 “Just as many were astonished at you, My people, so His appearance was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men.”}} The sense in that verse is that the weight of our filthy sins upon the Saviour on the cross was so great that He was so disfigured, his face contorted, that He was not recognisable as a human being. The Pulpit Commentary puts it this way, [[“The world was "astonished" to see in One, no outward show of grandeur or magnificence, no special beauty or "comeliness" (Isaiah 53:2), but a Presence unattractive to the mass of men at all times, and in the end so cruelly marred and disfigured as to retain scarcely any resemblance to the ordinary form and face of man.”]]