Whithorn Kirk where Memories Lurk

Whithorn Parish Kirk in southern Scotland is right next to the nation’s oldest church, the old priory, now a ruin. The new church is built in a respectable, medieval style, but is quite obviously nineteenth-century. Upon entry, one sees stairs on either side accessing the gallery, and up one of the walls is a long line of framed photographs. These are ministers of the kirk, each appropriately side-whiskered, bearded, moustachioed or clean shaven as the times preferred. I have no doubt there is a list of them all, somewhere, not unlike the one we have at Salem Chapel, but theirs will likely go back further.

Apart from a few from the 1970s, or perhaps a little earlier, none will now be remembered. Looking at our own list, there are only perhaps a half-dozen regulars at Salem Chapel who can recall my predecessors. Now in my tenth year of this pastorate, I have been here longer than most members. It might be that, if the Lord Jesus tarries, health allows and the members acquiesce, I am still here in decades to come. Yet I too shall become a dry, historical footnote, another photograph of a dead man, gazing out with unseeing eyes, a name forgotten, a ministry exhausted. Yet the Christian has no need to make a name for himself, for only the approval of God is worth desiring, and He knows and remembers His own. I pray Salem Chapel continues well beyond my time, that a people not yet born shall one day worship here, and that the old gospel of grace will only ever be the focus of our pulpit.