Lessons from Scarisbrick Hall ii: Tower

Scarisbrick Hall boasts an impressive 100-foot tower which, in the flatlands of the county’s west, can be seen for miles around. It is not unlike Big Ben, chiefly because they shared an architect. Yet when I called this month, it was covered in scaffolding. I was informed that the restorative work on the tower had actually been completed, but that the proprietors were awaiting the scaffolding firm to remove their equipment. I have my own experience of scaffolders’ tardy attitude to clearing away their clobber; they must make enough money without having to scaffold again with those same poles. So the Scarisbrick tower looks like it is undergoing repairs and restoration, when it is actually in better order than it has been for decades. It is just covered up by clutter, much like the risen Lazarus still wearing the grave clothes as he exited the tomb.

The ‘inner man’, the spirit, of the Christian, is redeemed, renewed and eternally living; the body of the Christian in which the said spirit is wrapped, continues to decay and appears as mortal and earth-bound as ever. One day, the scaffolding will be removed from Scarisbrick, and my current flesh and bone shall be removed from me. When it happens, I will look grander and finer than even that gloriously gothic stone column, scraping the Lancastrian sky. We shall not remain spirits for ever for it is God's will that we be clothed; but in immortal flesh, not mortal. 

For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life.

2 Cor 5:1-4, NKJV