Family Lessons 127: Taming the Wild Men

I decided to visit the Church of the Good Shepherd of ‘Tatham Fells’ this summer. It sits amidst the hills of Bowland and was neither easy to locate, nor to access, perhaps to locals' delight. Sadly, it was rebuilt in Victoria’s reign, and I thought it unnecessary fortress-like in its design, though the door was left open and I felt welcome enough. This is where my eighteenth-century Wildman ancestors lived and died, at such places as Over Craggs, which they called home. There is something quite remote and rugged about the place, yet it is certainly beautiful and not lacking charm. Little wonder that folk named after wild, rough characters living on craggy hilltops considered this place to be their home.

Yet their church, even allowing for its austere Victorian replacement and plainer original, was named after that most beautiful and caring aspect of the Lord Jesus’ character and office - the Good Shepherd, ‘who lays down His life for the sheep’. Truly, He tames and re-makes the wildest men, sooths and comforts the most troubled of worriers and emboldens the weakest and feeblest of minds. In its grounds my ancestors lay, but in His bosom their spirits now dwell if His word they believed and to His grace they yielded. Never assume a person is so rough, obnoxious or wild that the grace of God cannot draw, save, sustain and preserve them. Wild olives He grafts into Israel, and wild men He draws to His throne. 

And when he was come out of the ship, there met him incontinently out of the graves, a man which had an unclean spirit: Who had his abiding among the graves, and no man could bind him, no not with chains:  Because that when he was often bound with fetters and chains, he plucked the chains asunder, and brake the fetters in pieces, neither could any man tame him…

…And they came to Jesus, and saw him that had been possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sit both clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid.

Mark 5, Geneva Bible