The Rev Lezley Stewart is Associate Minister at Edinburgh: Greyfriars Kirk.
I’VE recently been captivated by some beautifully haunting tunes from The Lost Songs of St Kilda.
Played poignantly on a piano, and using a simple microphone, these melodies were recorded in an Edinburgh nursing home before Trevor Morrison died.
As a young child Trevor learned the melodies from an itinerant piano teacher from St Kilda, and having laid down the tunes he carried all his life, they have inspired new classical compositions which have now been released as an album, proving very popular in the classical charts.
It would have been hard for Trevor or his piano teacher to have foreseen this legacy, and how new listeners would be introduced to these old tunes from a now uninhabited group of Scottish islands.
It is a wonderful and enduring gift to leave behind.
Of course, we all leave things behind as we travel life’s journey, but often we will have little opportunity to recognise what our legacy is.
We might feel like we live ordinary lives, but is there such a thing as an ordinary life?
Do we not all have a unique footprint as we walk gently in Christ’s footsteps?
To believe that we can leave behind a positive legacy is a powerful thing.
To understand that in the daily flow of life, as surely as we live and breathe, we are leaving something of value behind is to afifrm God’s gift of life.
It is not always about what we do, but rather who we are – how our faith shapes our character, our being, and centres the way we interact.
What do we leave behind in terms of our relationships with one another, with God’s creation, and ultimately in the way we allow God to shape who and what we can be?
One of the things that ministry affords is the opportunity to deeply appreciate the gifts that “ordinary” folk bring to God’s work in its widest sense.
Many with humble hearts will never know their touch upon the life of a neighbour, or the mustard seed of faith grown, but not always witnessed by the sower.
When Jesus asked his disciples to leave behind their nets and embark on a new adventure of faith with him, he called them to leave something more important behind – his words, his ways, and his wisdom.
No one ever feels up to this task, and few believe they can really make a difference, but that’s when we make the common mistake of thinking that we have to do things in our own strength or in isolation.
Everyone will understand and experience the Spirit of God in a different way, but remaining open to that guidance and power each day offers an invitation to leave behind something more enduring than we can ever imagine.
The gift of faith, and the sharing of God’s melody of grace and compassion that accompanies both the high and low notes of life is a transformative thing.
The gift of faith, and the sharing of God’s melody of grace and compassion that accompanies both the high and low notes of life is a transformative thing.
Just as many who have lived before us have carried the song and the story, so we each take our place and continue the work of what God calls us to leave behind.