The Pointer November 2021
Rector The Rt Rev Darren McCartney 028 4175 3497 suffragan1@gmail.com
The Magazine of the Church of Ireland Parishes of Clonallon & Warrenpoint with Kilbroney in the Diocese of Down and Dromore Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
These days, I find myself on my motorcycle riding up through the same mountains. The mountains haven’t changed but how I experience them has. They are still as rugged and beautiful as the day I first saw them, yet how I interact with them has changed over the years.
Psalm 90:2 Many of us live surrounded by the mountains and the sea and what a blessing it is. People travel long distances to experience the mountains as they display their beauty during the seasons of the year. Whilst riding my motorcycle within the parish, due to my car being serviced, the thought came to my mind of how beautiful and how unchanging the mountains seem to be. Generations have gazed at the mountains, and they would have seen, basically, what we see today. Perhaps you have seen some of the photos of early paintings of the area, shared on the local Facebook pages. These attest to the fact that we basically see what others have seen for hundreds of years.
Maurice Canning Wilks (1910–1984) In The Mournes at Annalong.
I can count myself within the number above who would have travelled quite a distance to experience the mountains. I still remember my first experience of them, when only 10 years old, coming to stay for our Boys’ Brigade Camp. I look at a couple of mountains and remember that, in my twenties, a friend and I climbed their rock face, coaching ourselves, in an effort, to control our nerves.
I find my mind drifting to the nature of God. Holy Scripture tells us that God is the same yesterday today and forever. I am the one on a journey and I am the one that changes. I am thankful that I was baptised and grew up within the life of the Christian community. God has always been there, unchanging, and yet over the years how I have encountered, and experienced God has. I think this to be a healthy thing as the way I interact and communicate with Liam has changed over his short life, yet my love for him has not. I know God’s love has been the same, constant, and yet as I reflect on my own journey, God has used different experiences, people, and things to communicate and engage with me. We experience the mountains in different ways throughout the changing seasons. The changing seasons of our own lives ought to help us experience God in different ways during those seasons and yet God remains the same. It is my prayer that you would know and experience God’s love in this season of your own life. Blessings
+Darren