Our land still holds the sadness

Katy Emslie-Smith July 05, 2024 3 2

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Psalm 22: 1-2 (NIVUK)

1 

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from my cries of anguish?

2 

My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
    by night, but I find no rest.

This prayer was written in response to a visit to Croick Church which sits in beautiful Strathcarron in the north of Scotland. Glencalvie was once home to a thriving community of folk living from the land and worshipping in this church. In 1842, in order to make way for sheep, which were more economically beneficial, the people were cleared from the glen by the landowners, many to go to experience famine and deep poverty. They gathered for refuge in makeshift shelters in the churchyard before their final forced departure during which time they etched their names in the leaded glass panes of the church windows. It is poignant to read these names of people who must have felt completely forsaken by God, who at the time seemed silent and absent, unable or unwilling to rescue them.

Jesus’ cry from the cross articulates his separation from the perfect love and relationship with God the Father, as in death he appropriated to himself all of our dislocation and distance from God, every seeming silence and absence, to achieve reconciliation.

Prayer:

Lord, our land still holds the sadness

Of those who were cleared from home and field.

We smell the sorrow in stain of cut peat

And hear the curlew’s call, low over brown land,

A seeking song, bereft.

Their lament would raise to you the psalmist’s questions

In loss and pain, “How long, Lord?”

Their call to a seeming faceless God for answer

Echoing back into the silence of an emptying glen.

Lord, for our world we share their lament,

The wrestled thoughts of your absence or forgetfulness.

Yet might silence allow for a deeper listening?

Might the wait of suffering bring a testing

Of how love meets with the depths of pain?

Might our wondering take us before a thirsty Christ,

Hung by nails, stretched to the hot sky, waiting

Asking if he too was forsaken?

And might the searching songs of anger and grief

Find the refrain which kindles our frail hope,

Allows us to dare to believe in unfailing love?

“He is risen.”

On a morning of new mercies

The silence is broken.

(From Landscapes of Grace by David Clark and Katy Emslie-Smith)