Permanency, and dependability.

We're just back from our few days away in the caravan - bringing in the New Year with our farming hosts in the backwaters of rural Dumfries-shire.

While we were away, we paid our final Historic Scotland visits for 2008: to Sweetheart Abbey and Caerlaverock Castle, a couple of exceptionally well-preserved pieces of architecture. However, whilst visiting the town of Dumfries, we looked into a slightly more modern building - the local Woolworth's store. As most of my readers probably know, Woolworth's is closing down and, as I walked around a store with shelves almost empty, I was saddened at the thought of this once permanent feature of most British High Streets being no longer. I recalled my period as head chef in the cafe in the Belfast store - my first taste of "occupational authority"!; I recalled walking around the same store, as a boy, and managing to read a number of the literary classics - that my parents couldn't afford to buy - a chapter at a time.

I also remembered the words of the Lord Jesus: "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Matt 28:18-20)

The other words that came to mind were written by the anonymous writer of the Letter to the early Hebrew Christians: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." (Heb 13:8)

In a world in which there is so much flux and change, how good it is to be able to place our trust in the unchanging One, Who is always faithful and true. Henry Lyte knew something about it. In his well-known hymn, Abide with me, is the verse:

"Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me."

May you know that abiding presence throughout the whole of the coming year.