Recently I was in Inverness, Scotland. It was my first trip to the U.K. and my first destination on this first trip. I was taking it all in, enjoying what I had only dreamed about for years. There was much to explore, historically and gastronomically, all within walking distance from the pub and rooms above where we were staying…but there was one place around the corner I saw when we arrived. I decided to walk over in the morning and check it out.

Now, everyone who knows me knows that I am a sucker for a bookshop…and here I was in Scotland, walking to what is advertised as Scotland’s oldest second-hand bookshop. I opened the door.

Immediately I was overwhelmed by the atmosphere of the place. The building (ca. 1790) was split timber, stone, and brick.. The floor was a bit uneven and seemed to slope, at a slight angle, up from the entryway. Inside was a large open space with a balcony that ran around all sides and what little sunlight there was outside shown through colored glass. I immediately started browsing by the entrance door and touched, opened, paged through, the older and newer titles of books that filled the entire space.

There were books and books and more books. The shelves, which were eight to ten feet high, couldn’t hold them all. Much of the spare space on the floor was crowded with even more stacks of books. However, each nook filled with shelves was organized, labeled, and easy to find one’s way through.

I turned through pages of history, art, poetry…and theology (some of my favorite theologians and commentators, along with some of my favorite authors and poets, are Scottish – so I was taking my time). Drawn to the older-looking bindings, I was somewhat shocked at the prices. They were reasonable. Then I remembered that my definition of “old” and Europe’s definition of “old” were not the same. Scotland’s “old” is older and there is more of it. Even books published in the 1900s and before, some signed, were very reasonably priced.

The feel of the bindings, the sound of each page as I turned through them, the musty smell of leather, paper, old stone and burning wood (as there was an old, large, woodfire stove in the middle of the room…fighting of the chill of Scotland in the Highlands) were all playing in the back of my mind, as my eyes concentrated on what I held. Other shoppers and tourists walked pass me, around me, and I heard languages: German, French, Japanese, Italian, “American” and “Scotch” English…and more. But it was all simply an underscore to the covers and pages that occupied my eyes and my mind at the time.

My heartrate was slowing down, my mind was starting to “ease”. Lately, the recent stress of world and national events have bothered me more than they should. They’ve played on my aging mind and body. Even the full and wonderful season which just passed at church, with all of its extra events, special worship services, and the things that take up more of my aging mind were, though enjoyable, tiring. This moment, this first day in Scotland in this bookshop though, played like a beautiful song in my bones, and acted like much-needed medicine. Again, others might not feel the same way about an old, Scottish, bookshop, but for me this place, these books, this atmosphere, was magical.

After some moments of moving my face and hands from book to book I finally set the books down and started looking around. On one end of the room, downstairs, was a large table, stacked (of course) with more books, and presided over by the proprietor of the hour: a man who looked like he had auditioned and been cast because  he looked exactly like whom you would expect to BE the bookseller – middle aged, tartan sweater, wire-rim glasses. On the opposite end of the room was a circular staircase, leading up to the balcony where there were more books, prints, maps, etc. I decided to climb up with my camera phone and get some interesting photos.

I stopped at the top of the circular staircase and looked around at the space in total for the first time…my face now out of the books and shelves. I looked across and saw, above the sellers table, a beautifully carved part of the balcony and my mind put it together and I recognized immediately what I saw…it was a pulpit. A pulpit. With mouth agape, I put the book down, stepped back, and turned my head and body to look all around me, up and down, far and near. Of course, the colored glass was stained glass (how had I not noticed that?), the part of the balcony where I was standing had obviously at one time been the choir loft, the “sloping floor”, the windows, the pulpit…everything said: this was once a church.

I had been so focused on the shelves and books, the bindings and pages, that they stole my attention away from the obvious things surrounding me. When I finally raised my head from them I “saw where I was”.

And there it is.

I wasn’t just in a bookshop in Scotland, I was in a physical metaphor illustrating the Truth of  The Kingdom of God.

Jesus gives us the well-known illustration of The Kingdom of God being like a mustard seed; small but growing into a large enough shrub that it’s almost a tree. However, one of the many epiphanies I had when visiting Israel was a day when I asked our guide what the ubiquitous plant was we saw everywhere, in town and country, growing wild. He told me it was mustard. I didn’t recognize that variety. He said, once it takes root it spreads insidiously and is almost impossible to eradicate. Now, I had always accepted the illustration of the mustard seed telling me The Kingdom would start small and grow large…but I had never thought of it illustrating its inevitable growth, spreading, impossible to put down, and surrounding me. 

The Plan, His Plan, is not and never has been, to “rescue us from the world”…but rather to ”restore the world FOR us”, bringing earth and heaven together under one King: Jesus. That’s what the Kingdom is…and once planted, it’s growth to fulness is inevitable. I/we will surely lose the “strength for today” that comes from “hope for tomorrow” if we concentrate on the “individual book titles, bindings, pages” of life and forget to look up every-once-in-a-while to see The Kingdom growing around us…still and always. We will forget, in the overwhelming amount of “books on shelves” (containing the good and bad of the world around us) that all pages of life are housed in a working Plan, a Promise, a Sanctuary, and THAT is the TRUE reality.

I will not give in to bad doubt nor unhealthy fear. God is still working the Plan. The Kingdom seed has been planted, and it will inevitably grow to fulness. We KNOW the end of the story. We might be able to hinder it, but we can never stop it. The world around us can only distract us when we forget to step back, look up, look out, and look forward. 

That old Scottish bookshop is still a “sanctuary”, to me at least. It houses and encompasses thousands upon thousands of books and chapters and sentences and words…I can concentrate on the details of life, focus on the worrisome things…but if I would simply take a moment to look up from the dusty page, I’d be able to see no matter how bad the times may be in this chapter, or even how good they may me…the real story is: God is holding all things, good and bad, together…as He is leads us to the place and time when earth and heaven are one.

Step back and look around every every once-in-a-while. Never lose faith. Never lose hope. No matter what the pages tell us…we are housed in God’s bookshop.

******* 

(NOTE: The Leakey Bookshop, on Church Street in Inverness, began as St. Mary’s Gaelic Church, created for Highlanders who spoke only Gaelic. It eventually became Greyfriars Free Church, serving the community for centuries.)