Jack Kellet (Rev), Walkerburn, Innerleithen

The fact that our beloved minister and her husband chose not to escape from their labours at the expected time but to stay with us and work out new ways of providing eflective ministry for us in these uncertain months of Covid-19 and the shortage of ministers for vacancies, has brought to mind how often “retired” people have gone on to change the church and the world.

When Geoflrey Palmer retired as Professor of Brewing at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, he used his new-found time to challenge a much-lauded Professor of Scottish History because his newly published book showed no knowledge of the colossal wealth that Jamaica and slavery had brought to our important families and public institutions. The truth about our past that has since burgeoned in all the media has opened hearts and minds of not only Scottish people forever.

And still Professor Palmer is not resting on his laurels. With missionary zeal, he has used social media to publicise far and wide a children’s fable he wrote about racism. It tells of a Mr White who became so charmed by a seagull that came into his garden to be fed every morning that he called it Gilbert and was delighted to see how fiercely it defended its “exclusive” rights. How proud Mr White was to see Gilbert drive ofltwo ravens that he himself was not keen on and who dared to think they too could feed in his garden! But then the two ravens arrived with the new-born chick they had to provide for - and Mr White realised the extent of the cruelty his prejudice was inflicting……And the world for everyone had to change.

Now, it so happens that in January of this year another Palmer came back into my ken. Recently retired Karen was using her retirement from work as a psychiatrist in a Glasgow housing scheme to write up into a book the diaries she had kept of her first pregnancy - of the normally shattering news that the baby would not survive long; of just how the birth of Jennifer and the few hours of her life aflected mother, father Gordon and so many others, not only at the time but through all the years since.

Jennifer: A Life Precious to God, published by Instant Apostle (as featured in the August issue of Life and Work), has already moved some people first to tears, and then to wonder at the revelation of what such an experience - normally borne privately - actually means for the couple and their baby, as well as a testimony to the part God Himself can and does play.