If you have a modern cellphone, you always have a camera. One son was playing in an orchestra last night — this was taken around 8PM looking over one of the university hostels and the hospital. The sky lit up: I wanted a better sensor than that in my smartphone, for this captures but a quarter of the scene. And yes, it is that light: daylight saving and the southernmost university in the world does that by mid October.

In this world there is beauty, glory and at times power. We are not called to regret enjoying these things: they are given to us. They are good. But they are tools. and we have to recall that this nation is not ours, nor is this land ours. We are pilgrims. As the Hobbit was told, there was another nation on this land before us, and when we are forgotten yet another will tend the fields we love.

The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

Then turning to the disciples he said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”

(Luke 10:17-24 ESV)

There are three errors that Christians make: one is to spend too much time on the beauty of this world, of nature. even our objects designed for devotion can be a trap. Now, the ikon lover says that the image is not divine, but reminds us of that which is divine, of heroes, of martyrs. We need to remember that the nations we live in, are loyal to, can kill us, and can be destroyed: as surely as the Soviets killed the Romanovs, and were themselves destroyed.

The Church is not tribal. It is universal: every nation, every tribe will worship Christ. So to the sole Russian reader, that means Americans, to the Americans, that means the French, and the the French that means Austrians, to the Austrians, that means Jews.

The second error is to deny that the church bas power, to heal, to intervene, to do the work of Christ. There is no such thing as dispensationalism. The reasons Christ sent out 72 disciples exist, and the gifts of grace, of the Holy Spirit, exist. We should celebrate the miracles that happen, particularly on the mission fields, and not come up with theological explanations for our lack of power and fervour.

The final error is to chase power as an end to itself. To consider the church as akin to a role-playing game, where you want to hit level 100 as some kind of spiritual secular maze. We are not on this earth to seek power. We are here to drive the works of evil back. We are here to bear witness to Christ. But we belong elsewhere.

If we rejoice, it should not be in our tribe, but in the gospel: and that our friends will meet us in heaven. If we grieve, it should be for the friends that have been lost to the spirit of this age, that grinds men and women into mere shells of what they should be, and then damns them to the trash heap when they are broken, and no longer useful idiots.

The church is not tribal. Do not let the elite put you on some tribal plantation to farm your vote. I am reformed: but if on a Sunday I cannot find an evangelical kirk, or a protestant one, I will stand in the back of a Catholic or Orthodox one: although their theology is strange and I do not know the antiphons. For Christ is not limited to our denominations or tribes, and with my brothers it is my duty to be.