Here is a difficult question - who here has a birthday some time this year?
Who has a birthday with an "0" in it this year?
Who has a wedding anniversary some time about now?
Birthdays - especially big "0" birthdays - and anniversaries are landmarks in our lives. They mark out the journey of our life. Some landmarks are natural - natural features that stand out, and can be seen for miles. Some are man-made, and are put there for all sorts of reasons (signposts, milestones, cairns, obelisks, trigpoints, toposcopes, white horses, statues). Landmarks stand out, and they are often things that we look out for.
Last week we all heard about the young man, Jamie Neale, who got lost in the Blue Mountains in Australia. Why did he get lost? Because, he said, he couldn't see any landmarks. He was in thick eucalyptus forest, and he couldn't see beyond it. In fact there are several very obvious landmarks in the area - The Three Sisters, The Ruined Castle and Mount Solitary - all very prominent natural rocky landmarks. But he needed to get above the trees, or to climb a tree, to see the landmarks and to get his bearings. Down in the forest, without any landmarks, he didn't know where he was.
I want to think this morning about one particular kind of landmark - see if you can guess which it is. It is made by people. It is made by many different people. It is made gradually, over a long time. We often see them on mountains.
It is - a cairn! In Lifepath we think about cairns. And it is our life-path that I want us to think about this morning.
As John Barr reminded us all in Lifepath, a cairn tells you 3 things:
1) It tells you that you are on the right track.
Who here has climbed a mountain? Usually at first the track is very clear, isn't it? It may follow a stream, or a valley, and its often sign-posted and well worn. But when you get higher up the mountain the path often gets rocky, and it's not so easy to see where it is going. Sometimes sheep trails look like the path, and can be confusing. And sometimes you think "Am I on the right track? Have I missed the path?" It can be dangerous to miss it, especially if it is foggy or dark. There are cliff edges , and steep and dangerous slopes. So it is a relief each time you see a cairn, which tells you you are on the right track. And often, on a very bleak and rocky mountain, you literally go from cairn to cairn.
Cairns tell you that you are on the right track. On a clear day you can look back and see the chain of cairns that you have been following. And you may feel a sense of achievement. "Wow! Look how far I have come! I can see that tricky bit down there, where I struggled. And that was where I stopped to rest, and enjoy the view. And now I'm here!"
And you may be able to look ahead, and see the cairns to come - though that is often more difficult, because you are not sure where to look, or where the way ahead leads. But if there have been cairns to guide you so far, you can be sure there will be more ahead. If there is mist or fog you certainly won't be able to see the way ahead, and you will have to take it a stage at a time, going from cairn to cairn.
Life is like that, isn't it? Birthdays and special occasions like wedding anniversaries are like cairns. And we can stop and look back, and we see the way we have come. We see good times and hard times. Easy bits and steep, challenging bits. Sometimes perhaps we missed the track for a while, and took the wrong route, and we had to back-track. We remember all the ways in which God has blessed us and helped us.
We think about the journey we have come on. And today we are here. We are where we are. And hopefully we are on the right track. And then we look ahead. And the way may seem clear. Or it may seem very unclear. At times the path we are on may just peter out, and come to a stop - and we have to look around, and set off again in a new direction.
Isn't life sometimes like that - perhaps when we take on a new job, or move house; or when we retire. The path peters out, and we have to branch off in a new direction. But we know for sure that there is a right way ahead, just as there has been a right way up to here. God has a route planned for us. And if we follow His markers, step by step, stage by stage - listening to God, being guided by His word - then we will keep to the right track.
In his second letter John talks about walking in truth, walking in obedience, and walking in love. Truth, obedience and love. These are like markers, cairns, which show that we are on the right track.
A cairn tells us that we are on the right track.
2) The second thing a cairn tells us is that others have been here before us.
We are not the first to come this way. Otherwise there wouldn't be a cairn. And that's reassuring isn't it?
If others have been this way before then it must be possible. It must be passable.
When we lived in northern Kenya, on a mountain surrounded by desert, an American anthropology student from New York got lost in the desert. He was trying to find his way back to base camp, and he got lost because there were no markers. He was used to road signs, and street names, and buildings and city maps. Here there was nothing. No markers. No signposts. It was such a wilderness that it was, in effect, as though nobody had been there before.
And he didn't know how to read the natural signs - like the direction of the sunrise, and the southern cross etc.
He was lost because nobody had left any clues as to which way to go. Sadly he was lost for several days, without water, and by the time he was found it was too late. He died.
Cairns tell us that others have been this way before us. We are not the first.
And in our life journey we can know that. I love reading biographies - the stories of other people's life journeys.
What they went through, how they coped, how God helped them. I love hearing people's testimonies - not the theory of the Christian life but the practical. How God has helped them in their life-path.
As a boy one of my heroes was Alexander Mackay, one of the first missionaries to Uganda. And I treasured, and read several times, his biography, "Mackay of the Great Lake". His story, of faith and courage and suffering, inspired me - and I'm sure was one of the factors in my ending up as a missionary in Uganda. Who has inspired you in your life journey? Think of someone - and thank God for them.
Each stone on the cairn has been laid there by someone who was on the same journey that we are on.
And of course one of the biggest stones was laid by Jesus Himself, Who, we are told, has been tested and tempted in every way that we are. Are we finding life hard, and the future uncertain? - Jesus has been there, and He knows.
Are we facing hostility, opposition of some kind? - Jesus has been there. He understands. Are our friends letting us down, failing to support us? - They did to Jesus. Are we coping with pain? - Jesus knew pain, both physical and emotional.
Jesus has been here before. His stone is on the cairn. Many saints, many people of God, have been this way before us. Many people who never thought they would make it, who felt inadequate - they have been; they have left their mark. They made it - and so can we, with God's help.
So let's be encouraged and inspired by those who have been this way before us. Let's read the stories of Bible men and women - weak, fallible people who walked with God. Let's be inspired by the stories of the monks who, against all the odds, built this church. By those who, over the centuries, have kept the Christian story alive. Let's read Christian biographies and testimonies, and be encouraged.
A cairn tells us that others have been this way before. We are not alone.
3) A cairn invites us to add our stone to it.
It invites us to say "I am part of this story. "I too am on this journey." We may place our stone with joy or with sorrow,
We may do it with thanks, or with sheer relief that we have got thus far.
In our Bible reading Samuel made a landmark. He set up a stone, and gave it a name, "Ebenezer", meaning "Thus far has the Lord helped us" It was a symbol, a sign, a marker, that at that place God had helped them to defeat the Philistines.
Abraham built an altar of stones on which to sacrifice Isaac, and God stopped him, and provided a ram instead.
And Abraham called that spot, that pile of stones, "Jehovah-Jireh", meaning "The Lord will Provide".
Jacob set up a stone in the desert, at the place where God spoke to him in a dream, and he called it "Bethel" - "The House of God".
It was important to God's people, throughout the Old Testament, to mark special occasions, to remember and to celebrate special events in their history, to name special places, to set up stones to mark places where God had done something special.
I think that marking, and remembering, and celebrating special occasions is important - whether birthdays, or anniversaries of special occasions. A cairn invites us to add our stone. To say "I have been here too!"
We might want to look back and call our stone Ebenezer - "Thus far the Lord has helped me." Or we might want to look ahead, and name it "Jehovah-Jireh" - "The Lord will provide." We might want to name our stone "Thank you!" or "Sorry!" or "Please!" or "Help!" But whatever we call it, it marks that we too have been this way.
And perhaps with our stone we add the prayer that maybe, in some small way, our stone, our journey, will be a witness and an encouragement to those who come after us.
Life is a journey. Let's look back on the way we have come - and offer our thanks, our joy, our pain, to God.
Let's thank Him for all those who have passed this way before, and who have influenced our lives, and been our inspiration.
Let's thank God that we are today where we are. Let's relish the present. Let's not live in the past - that's a great temptation as we grow older. Let's thank God for the past, but lets enjoy and live in the present.
And, as we add our stone to the cairn, let's look ahead, and trust God to lead us, step by step, in His way for us for the future. We may not be able to see the way ahead, but we know that He has gone before us - the cairns of life will be there to guide us.
Yes, there will surely be difficult places to negotiate. But there will also be wonderful views, great vistas.
And one thing we know - there is a way ahead marked out for us.
"How can we know the way?" asked Thomas. And Jesus replied "I AM the Way!"
David Webster
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