The past week has been taken up with family time—and it has been great! Emily, Steve and Colette arrived last Tuesday, and since then we have visited and revisited sites around both Dublin and Northern Ireland. Traveling with a one year old is an experience I have not had for many years, and while it does have its difficult moments, I love it. They brought a stroller with them, and it is used some times, but most of the time Colette is with grandpa—either walking along holding a finger or being carried. Tough life!

Our visit to the North was highlighted by a time with the Bruces, the family that served at Calvin while I was in Lisburn four years ago. They are all well, and said to be sure to say hello to all the Calvin folk. David has taken a new position, moving from Scripture Union to the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland. He is in charge of Home Missions, which means he has some pretty significant responsibilities related to the whole of the work of the church. Let’s remember him in prayer…
During our visit in Lisburn Nancy and I were hosted by Brian and Andrea. Brian is my co-cyclist with whom I will begin pedaling in just a few days. We will fly to Barcelona then cycle north to the north coast of France, working our way up and over and through the Pyrenees—following some of the routes the Tour de France regularly uses. We are hoping for good weather and trusting that we will be able to make it up the hills that the pros climb, although our speed will probably be just a little less than theirs.
At Lisburn we also attended the Sunday evening service, got to see friends there, and then headed north to the cottage of another Lisburn friend, the Clerk of Session while Nancy and I were there, John Millar. Nancy and I had been there before, and I knew that it would be a perfect place for the visitors from the US to have a bit of rest and enjoy the best of Irish scenery. That is what happened. We walked the beach, crossed the famous Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, clambered on the basalt columns of the Giants Causeway, and introduced Colette to cows and blackberries. The cottage is situated on a rise above White Park Bay, with a view of the beach and a panorama to the north, east and west. What a treat it was to be there!



Now the rest of the family is in London for a couple days while I have returned to Dublin for the final “duties” of teaching and preaching. Our time in Dublin has been wonderful, and as it draws to a close we look back with thanksgiving to God for the opportunity to be here, serve, learn and get to know more people with whom we will have contacts for years to come.

One of the interesting aspects in moving from Seattle to Greensboro is the perspective on history which we have moved in to. While the history around Seattle is interesting, particularly that of the interaction between Native Americans and early settlers, from the perspective of North Carolina all that is modern history.

Now we live (when we are at home) only a mile from the site of one of the turning points in the Revolutionary War—our home is just off Old Battleground Way and near New Garden Road, a strip of asphalt that covers the marching line of the British soldiers as they headed north to encounter the Continental Army. Downtown Greensboro has a plaque noting where the government of the Confederacy met on several occasions, and the Woolworth on Elm Street (Main Street) is the site of the first sit-in during the Civil Rights movement. The roots in the south are deep.


But after a little time in Ireland, this history migrates into the folder entitled Recent Events. As I have noted before, we have visited burial sites dating back between four and five thousand years, walked past St. Patrick’s well, visited the landing place of the Vikings, and strolled in the central courtyard of an English castle built in the twelfth century. Around the corner from us is the Bleeding Horse Pub which bears a plaque honoring its foundation in 1649, just up the street is a public library founded in 1701 (Marsh’s Library, containing some of Jonathan Swift’s collection), and a church that is only 500 years old is not worth a footnote in the historical record of the area. The roots here are much deeper.

But being surrounded by the past does not mean being limited to the past, and the fascination of this place in this time is at least to a large part in the dynamics of today. Entry into the EU changed the face of Ireland, and moved it from the sideline to the center. The infrastructure was developed, high-tech and low-tech industries grew and prices skyrocketed. People from all over the world have flocked to Ireland, many of them students or professional people, in fact so many that a recent mapping of Dublin was striking in the amount of red—red meaning over half of the current residents were not born in Ireland. All of this is behind the description of Ireland as the Celtic Tiger.


Yet even this more recent history is giving way to news that this part of the world continues to change. Three signs of this have appeared in the headlines recently. One is the dramatic change in the public behavior of Dr. Ian Paisley, the most vocal proponent of maintaining the union of Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the party most committed to a united Ireland. In the past month they have sat together, laughed together and worked together as they both bear positions of leadership in a newly constituted Northern Ireland Assembly.
People in the north and south are amazed at this turn of events, and believers attribute it to a work of God in answer to prayers for peace on the island.

The second is an announcement last week that Aer Lingus, a global symbol and national pride of the Republic of Ireland, is going to abandon its Shannon, Ireland, routes and open new ones in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The people and politicians of Ireland are incensed at this move, the Irish clergy have issued a letter decrying the prioritization of profits over people, but it is a sign of the changing times.

Finally, Nancy and I spent an hour one recent afternoon greeting a Viking ship, the Sea Stallion, as it sailed and rowed into Dublin Harbor. This ship was built in the Viking Ship Museum in Denmark and built to show how Viking vessels would have appeared over a thousand years ago. The interest in this ship stemmed from the 1962 discovery in Denmark of five Viking ships, with the subsequent determination that one of them had been constructed in the Dublin area. This discovery spurred an interest in Viking sailing by historians, the ship was built using ancient techniques, and the crew of 60 sailed it from Denmark to Dublin. As a social experiment (60 people in an open boat with no privacy) the project was of interest to many, but as an historical statement it was to others. The dock this afternoon was lined with thousands of people, dignitaries from several countries, television and other media—all there to greet a ship reminiscent of ones that 1,211 years ago arrived at the same site to raid, pillage and rob…


What do I make of all this? Well, one thing is that the gospel faces an accelerating challenge—speaking to people in a world that is rapidly changing. The second thing is that the gospel is relevant to the world at every stage, every step, and every point in history. The message of the love of God showed so clearly to humanity in the person and work of Jesus Christ is a timeless message. It has had a formative shaping power in the history of Ireland—and it can today. The gospel is not stamped with a time-date: Best if Used By …. It is time-less… And it is the believer’s job to show that to the world. So the author of Hebrews reminds us, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Emily, Steve and Colette arrive in a few days. Then two more weeks and our time in Dublin will be over. It has been good.

Since returning to Dublin following a week away, we have been spending time visiting local sites and learning about the city and the nation. And it has been fascinating.

First we went to an ancient site called Newgrange. Located in the valley of the river Boyne, about 45 minutes north of Dublin, it is one of the oldest signs of human habitation in Ireland. The site includes three large stone mounds, each with an inside passageway that opens onto a burial chamber. We took the official tour of the site and learned that scientists have been able to discover almost nothing about the people who built the mounds, who was buried in them, or why they were built in the shape they have. There is writing in the passageway but no one knows what it means. The mounds are dated about 3000 BC, but beyond that nothing much is certain. Fascinating.

We then went to Dublinia, the Viking center of Dublin, and learned about the Vikings and the city. It seems that at the city of Dublin first became a city with the arrival of the Vikings at the end of the eighth century, and for several centuries it remained as such—separated from the rest of the country, which was made up of feuding clans of Irish with loyalty to one of the several kings. Gradually the Vikings blended with the surrounding population, but they maintained their important merchant and trading positions. On Good Friday, 1014, internal struggles between the several Irish provincial rulers boiled over into a battle at a place called Clontarf, a battle in which the Vikings joined with the soldiers of the area around Dublin (Leinstermen). Romanticists identify this battle as the end of the Viking era in Irish history, but many would say that it was more an internecine battle with the Vikings playing a part, and in fact the Vikings remained as a significant force in Dublin itself for many more years.


The next era we looked at was represented by the Dublin castle. This era began with what is called the Norman Invasion of 1169, an event which some would prefer to label as the Norman Invitation as it technically began with the English responding to a request of an Irish leader for help in his political ambitions. In any case the English arrived, settled into Dublin, built the castle on the site of an earlier primitive fortification, and began a centuries-long gradual expansion into the whole of the island.


Through all of this history, with its various forces and factors, a common thread of Christianity is woven. St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the largest church in Ireland, was built in the thirteenth century, replacing a small wooden church that had stood on the site of a well that the famous saint is said to have used to baptize new believers in the middle of the fifth century. Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin was probably founded around 1030 , and in a rare arrangement shared the status of cathedral with St. Patrick’s. Following the disestablishment of the Catholic church in Ireland both have retained the status of cathedral in the Church of Ireland, while Rome maintains St. Mary’s church as a Pro-Cathedral in recognition of their claim on Christ Church as the rightful seat of the Catholic Archbishop.
At Clonmacnoise, a monastery to the east of Dublin founded by St. Cirian, we walked on paths and entered ruins of a holy site built in the middle of the sixth century. Throughout the Republic reminders of the place of religion in the history of the island, such as shrines, monastic sites, cathedrals and The Book of Kells, abound. And it has been both a task and an interesting journey to see and walk in some of those places.


The more I learn the more I see there is to learn. When we leave Ireland we will know more than when we came, but we will also be aware of new puzzles and big gaps in our understanding that we never knew we had before. I guess that is the way it is supposed to be. It is like our growth in Christ—the more we know about him the more we know we do not know. In The Chronicles of Narnia one of the children made this profound observation about Aslan, the great lion and ruler of Narnia, The closer I get (to him) the bigger he grows. I find that to be true—do you?