St Oswald's Church, Thornton in Lonsdale

St Oswald's Church, Thornton in Lonsdale, I found interesting, with a number of its old features helpfully described and explained by laminated information cards. I was pleased to learn that one of my former history teachers had been the incumbent here and his love of things historic may have been the inspiration for the info sheets. He once wrote on my first-year school report “An excellent, budding historian”. Perhaps. As my form teacher responsible for pastoral care in the Lower Sixth, I might have described him as an excellent, budding clergyman.

This building is where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle married his first wife in 1885, and the church rightly has a display about it, with copies of the wedding certificate available to peruse and take home. It is a tenuous association with his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes, but one of which I rather approve, seeing as I am fond of old, northern churches and the sleuth of Baker Street.

Whether it be ancient Mowbray monuments in old churches, fictional thefts and murders in London and the stately halls of England, there is much in life which is mysterious and enigmatic. Not least of which is God Himself, who is invisible and beyond our comprehension. Many claim to have sought Him, others to be searching, while a foolish few claim there is nothing to find. Yet He promises in His word, the Bible, through Jeremiah the prophet:

And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. (29:13)

When the Bible speaks about mysteries, it refers them as being solved, their conundrums revealed by Jesus Christ. Seek Him and you find God. Ignore Him, and you stumble about in ignorance and darkness, for ever.

A D