Â鶹ԼÅÄ

Good morning.  In 1935 a woman called Isabel Frances Grant bought a small, disused church on the Hebridean island of Iona, and filled it with objects and artefacts from a Highland way of life which was passing away. She gave the museum the Gaelic word meaning ‘The Shelter’ because, she said, ‘it was to shelter homely ancient things from destruction’. 

The Highland Folk Museum, which long ago moved from Iona, is a big tourist attraction, but Isobel Grant often wrote about the older people for whom the objects were not just exhibits, but physical links to their childhood.   She recalled an old lady who had been brought to the museum by some younger relatives.  As they went around, pointing out this and that and exclaiming over the strange, old things, the old lady remained silent and withdrawn. 

Then, they came to a collection of cruisie lamps, hanging on a wall.  While Isabel was explaining to the young people how these oil lamps used to work, the old lady suddenly burst out, ‘But I can remember!’  She told Isabel about how the lamps used to hang in the threshing barn, and when the young men swung the flails up and down as they threshed, the flaring light caught the sweat on their arms, so that it glistened.  Isabel wrote that the old lady’s face flushed and became younger as she remembered. Seeing the lamps had brought the light and life of the past back to her. 

Objects are far more than themselves.  They are the visible sign of the invisible.  They hold our memories and past lives, and give them back. 

Lord – for the precious things which contain heart and soul, body and spirit - we thank you this morning.  Amen