Out Skerries, To Heaven

I spent yesterday on Out Skerries. This is one of the remotest parts of the Kingdom, which even Shetlanders consider a lonesome place and only 31 souls call home. There is a pretty kirk, the toilets of which we availed ourselves and whose teaspoons we borrowed, before washing and returning. There is just over a mile of road, a moth-balled primary school (awaiting the patter of tiny feet) and a couple of shops which didn’t bother opening. One, I am told, has a stock of nylon shirts, for which the island’s more fashion-minded denizens must have a penchant.

The island is bleak and barren, though not without the rugged beauty that windswept, sea-battered places frequently enjoy. The ferry comes a few times each week and the 4G reception was stronger here than in the kitchen of my house. Yet it still felt terribly cut off, remote, far-flung, isolated. It made Lerwick, Shetland’s capital, seem a metropolis, and the Great British coastline a mere dream.

I was reminded of the Apostle John, whose closing years were spent in exile on Patmos. His Mediterranean isle may have been balmier and drier than our rock in the North Sea, but it  must have felt no more hospitable. If he was put to hard labour in his old age, whatever pleasant views and opportunity for meditation his exile procured, he will have been denied, under the overseer’s stinging lash. Out Skerries is a fine place to visit, but the ferry’s return is something of a consolation. If I had to live there for several years, my interesting holiday destination would soon feel like the cruellest of gaols. The roaring sea, an object of yesterday’s fascination and photography, would seem an impassable barrier; the quaint shops and little church a reminder of all that was poor and meagre.

Few of us live on remote islands and few of us endure real exile away from kith and kin. Yet in another sense, wherever we live, the Christian is exiled from Christ. His beloved presence we seek; for His company we increasingly yearn. We are citizens of heaven, children of the world to come, yet here we still find ourselves. Even if our lives are comfortable, our homes pleasant, our families and friends convivial, we have an inescapable desire to return home. Return, you ask? We have never been to heaven, we do not know what it is like, we cannot miss what we never had. Yet deep down, we know it is where we belong. We were made for fellowship with God; we were ‘present’ in Adam’s loins when from grace he fell. Through his eyes, we tearfully turned around, snatching one last glance of Eden before the cherub’s flaming sword descended, for ever blocking our view. This is why all the world’s man-made religions dream of heaven; we share a collective memory of its bliss and an instinct to return. So enjoy your current life if you may; some exiles are harder endured than others. If you are a redeemed child of God, remember that one day, the ferryman shall come to carry you home. Do not cling to your gaol, but rather embrace the journey. Too many of us set up home on the barren rock and expect to live there forever.

But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city. Heb. 11:16