Saying Grace and Saving Grace

I was privileged to be invited to a wedding at the Congregational Chapel at Reeth last week. The young bride had worshipped with us for several months last year, so she and her fiancé were generous to invite me. The ceremony began sometime after 3pm; I had but one small job that day, and it was giving thanks for the food afterwards. I was preaching up in Westmorland at 8pm at Newbiggin-on-Lune, and thought I should have plenty of time to get from the one to the other. Because of photographs and speeches etcetera, we ate later then I anticipated, so I found myself in the invidious and faintly ridiculous position of giving thanks for the food and then immediately having to walk out of the reception to get to my car and set off north. I gave thanks for what I could not eat, I anticipated and relished what I would not enjoy. Thankfully, the event at Newbiggin provided bacon butties at its close and the two young men from Martin Top for whom I later provided transport home to Clitheroe were only too pleased to call at Lancaster’s KFC for a late night feast in the castle’s grounds.

As I was driving north-west through Swaledale, past the famous Tan Hill Inn (Britain’s highest public house at 1,732 feet), at whose bar I had not the time to order a good leg of mutton and tasty plum pudding, I reflected on my empty stomach. How worse, though, is the position of all those religious leaders, both non-Christian and ‘Christian’, who eloquently speak of God, of heaven, of peace, hope and joy, but whose failure to actually believe the gospel means they get nothing. Ritualistic distractors, liberalistic liars, charismaniac showmen, sterile formalists and self-righteous hypocrites: all speak of things they cannot and shall not ever enjoy. Salvation comes by Jesus Christ, Him and Him alone. Pray to God all you will, and discuss theology all you like, but except you believe in Him whom God sent to save the world, you shall perish in your sins.