Land of Hope and Glory

27 July 2005. Well, I am back in Edinburgh after a rather strange journey - physically and emotionally. Having little success with jobs and feeling the wanderlust rising, (and it sounds super spiritual, but I wanted to pray for the nation - "develop my prophetic edge for Scotland" as Romona so neatly put it) I left for Inverness on Thursday afternoon, with a very vague plan about what I was going to do, where I was going to stay, how long for and all that! Jack, a friend of Vicky's from Pietermaritzburg, for those of you who don't know him, and now I can say a friend of mine - he has been really great!! - was in Inverness, and so I tried to bag a bed in the place he was staying but there was no room. [And the next place also didn't have any room. Actually Jack later pointed out the profundity of this - he says "There have been many influential people in the past who have been told 'there is no room'"!!!] The third hostel I went to - guys - this place was something else. It looked (and smelt) like it was straight out of the music video for 'Yellow Submarine', and it was full of people to match!! I knew I'd have to quell some of my more 'delicate sensibilities' on this trip!! Held my own when a middle aged Italian man in his underwear tried to insist "Zis is my bed!"... referring to the bed I was climbing into! Jack left on Friday, but I wasn't alone as I met this girl called Rebekah, from Canada, who was hitchhiking around the UK and who turned out to be a Christian. We went to the Inverness Highland Games together on Saturday, which was really great - Scottish culture at its best. So many men in kilts, and some look rather too good in them.

But my bravado was only outward on the weekend. I was "chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy"*, a little bit more on the bitter side, suffice to say I took a rather melancholy turn. (oh man can you see me relishing this? I love writing! When else do you ever get to say "suffice to say"?) ANYWAY, basically I got to feeling really really down, and was exactly like the man in James who is tossed about by waves of doubt - Doubt with a capital D - very ugly. Sunday was the worst - yuck!!! Rebekah and I went to church twice on Sunday, to two different "Free" Church of Scotland's, which were identical in format, except that we stood to pray and sat to sing at the one, and sat to pray and stood to sing at the other. The freakiest thing about the morning service was that I noticed that the ladies in front of me were all wearing hats, and when I looked around, every single woman and girl was wearing a hat. But, I thought the essence of the preaching at both churches was really good, so that was something positive. And surely the more pentecostal churches are around somewhere!? I don't know in Inverness. I really liked the town, it reminded me of Grahamstown.

I suspect somebody was praying for me on Sunday. By the evening I felt a lot better. I set off for Ullapool on Monday morning, which is about an hour and a half north west, on the west coast. I had a brilliant, if vague and scary, idea to go to the Hebrides, turning the journey into something of a pilgrimage, but discovered that the ferry would be much too expensive. Ullapool is a quaint fishing village out of the nineteenth century! SO lovely. I spent the entire day walking up the coast, thrashing some stuff out with the Lord. No great revelation or even feeling of comfort came to me, but I do know that by the time I went to my hostel in the evening, I felt like an unwound spring, relaxed at last.

I met the most amazing Scottish lady at my hostel. Her name is Elizabeth and she's about 40. She and I struck up a friendship straight away. She has a very dry sense of humour!! Anyway, I found out she was from Edinburgh but she seemed reluctant to say anything personal, so I didn't ask about what she thought happened after you die, I just resolved to say in touch in the future. We had a grand time together. She took me on a beautiful 8 or 9 km walk on Tuesday, and feed me very well in the evening (The Lord says 'I will raise up the ravens to feed you'). ANYWAY, going to bed - we're in the bathroom, and I put on my HP tshirt to sleep in. "What's that on the back of your shirt?" she asks. "Oh..." I say "History Maker, Daniel 11v32... it's a Bible verse". Her jaw just dropped. "Are you into all that?" she asked. So I said "Yes, I'm very much into it!" "Do you mean to tell me that all this time, we could have been talking about important stuff, not all that drivvle about mountains and such?" Guys, she's an on fire Christian (temporarily and sensibly under a bush, like me). It was absolutely crazy. So then, everything came out!! God used her to encourage me, and me to encourage her. Even if you flee to ends of the earth, which is what Ullapool feels like, you can't hide from the Lord.

I stepped out of the bus into Edinburgh today, and found that once again I believed that God is big. Bigger. Even though I'm still afraid, it seems irrational NOT to see that God will look after me somehow. I realized in Ullapool how quickly the Word can slip away from you if you don't drink DEEPLY of it every day. You gotta chow that Word.

*This is a misquote from As You Like It, misquoted by none other than Sir Walter Scott, who used it in "Waverley", his novel which I am reading at the moment!