Yarrow Kirk

Yarrow Kirk is a quaint little parish church in the old Scottish county of Selkirkshire. It was built in that most turbulent of centuries, and its most turbulent of decades, the 1640s; it was the worst of times, it was the best of times. Without its walls are various graves and memorials to past ministers, including that to ‘James Thomson, shepherd’:

‘who perished in the snowstorm on December 7, 1882, at Whitefield, Yarrow, aged 27 years’.

Rather young, don’t you think? And a minister of the gospel, dying in freak weather, which God might have overruled. But he didn’t. 7/12/82 was the right time to call home the Rev. Thomson. No Christian dies too soon or too late; the time is appointed by God Himself.

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his Saints. Psalm 116:15, Geneva Bible.