18.2 "The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold."
The Bass Rock dominates the Firth of Forth. When it comes to rocks, there aren't many in Scotland that out rock the Bass Rock.
I happened to be at Pittenweem for the Arts Festival a week ago, and in the evening the sun fell on the rock. Sunday before I had preached on Psalm 18.2, and other Psalms where the rock metaphor is used to say something about God.
Like every poet of substance, the Psalmists knew their metaphors. Our lazy idiomatic question, "What are you like?", used when surprised by what someone says or does, is asked from the same instinct for insight, comparisons that make the truth more accessible because more familiar.
So the Psalmist poets ask "God, what are you like?" And in Scottish idiom they answer, "Like the Bass Rock!"
In the luminous softness of evening sunlight the Bass Rock is there, massively there.
In the grey gloom of a Scottish late winter afternoon, the Bass Rock is there, loomingly there.
In the chilling, marble-black midnights of January, the Bass Rock is there, invisible but there..
When the seas are rippled blue, undulating mirrors reflecting the blue of the sky, the Bass Rock is there.
When the seas are obscured by freezing fog and low clouds of battleship grey, the bass Rock is there.
When the seas surge with storm force fury and pulsating frustration, bent on destruction, the Bass Rock is there.
The Bass rock is there, massively and unmovingly, predictably and protectively, solidly and silently, there. Its thereness does not depend on our sight, is not threatened by climate nor toppled by waves.
What is God like? The Bass Rock, always there. Whether our inner climate is sunny or gloomy or besieged by storm force waves, there, always there.
Of course metaphors work through imagination, as image is made to live in the mind, pointing to those deeper realities which surround and support the life of faith. So a verse and a photograph do what within their limits they do best; help us to imagine, recover trust and renew hope in that alternative reality in which, whatever life is or is becoming, God is there. Like the Bass Rock, massively, immovably there.
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