St Mary Magdalene's Church, Broughton-in-Furness

St Mary Magdalene's Church at Broughton-in-Furness in what is Old Lancashire but modern Cumbria, is an impressive building. As well as being surprisingly spacious, as though its builders were expecting a baby boom or elevation to cathedral status, it also boasts an impressive Norman doorway (above). Before the communion table was a peculiar wooden cross, about which was attached lovely yellow flowers (bottom photograph). Yet the ancient doorway and the delicate flowers depicted two sides of the same coin: God’s patience and life’s brevity. The flowers were starting to wilt but the old doorway remained, ancient and steadfast.

Capping it all is the text beneath the tower’s clock:

WATCH FOR YE KNOW NOT THE HOUR

What hour? Watch for what? The context is the Lord Jesus' Second Coming and the world’s end, or even the destruction of Jerusalem, which many of his younger hearers would see with their own eyes. For people in this twenty-first century, we should be especially watchful for the Lord’s return, for we are twenty centuries closer to it than His apostles. Everybody who has lived inbetween has received their own, personal summons to judgement, an appointment with eternity which doctors and vitamin tablets may help delay but never evade. The ancient door to God remains open, and Christ Jesus beckons us enter, but our lives are fading, and we shall fall to the ground; our days are short, our minutes few.