Flocking to Embleton

This year, I passed by Embleton in Cumbria. There was little there worth stopping for, but I was minded of an occasion on which George Fox visited in 1653, who had "a great meeting, to which above a thousand persons flocked as to a horse-fair ... [and] largely declared the word of life to them for nearly three hours, and hundreds were convinced"*.

God often moves in the least significant places. The Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not Jerusalem; He lived mainly in Nazareth, not Judea; He chose humble fisherfolk to bear His message and He often saved the basest and humblest of people. Even today, He sustains a faithful chapel on remote Newby Hill, while many better places have boarded-up or faithless churches. Furthermore, He drew me to Himself; I, an insignificant fellow, who shall die as obscurely as I was born.