Brimham Rocks

My relatives and I called at Brimham Rocks in North Yorkshire last week. It is essentially an extensive country park with a large number of strange rock formations. Although the noticeboards assure visitors that they date back squillions of years, eighteenth-century antiquarians fancied they were the handiwork of the druids. I think neither explanation is true, but many of them enjoyed having suitable names dating back to who-knows-when. Pondering a given rock’s name and attempting to ‘see’ it in its shape was rather fun. Some I could see, but for others I evidently lacked sufficient perception or imagination. For example, the one called the Druid’s Writing Desk, below, was easy enough:

And so too the Eagle:

The idol stone, below, was also not open to objection, but several others were.

And we decided that the one below should be called the Crocodile Stone, as it quite clearly resembles the great reptile's head bursting out of the ground, seeking to devour a passing family. Why did no one else see this?

But what is this one, below? A lizard? An old woman? Your guess is as good as mine. 

The problem, of course, is that our minds do not all function in the same way. What is quite obviously a team of oxen to one is something quite different to another. And so, too, when people share their feelings about what God is saying to them. What might be clear and obvious to the one is not clear and obvious to another. That is why I have difficulty with people’s ‘little words from the Lord’. When God speaks, it is clear, and is usually clear to others, too. That is why I should rather spend an hour studying the Bible than three hours listening to Christian worship music with all the lights dimmed, in the hope that the Spirit (the Holy one, hopefully), lays something on somebody’s heart. Twice this year, someone has "given me a word'' which was either contrary to scripture or, like Brimham Rocks, something I just could not see. 

Thank God for the Bible.