The great scientist Isaac Newton famously said “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”.
It’s a humbling place to wake up, and find yourself sitting on the shoulders of giants, looking out, and realising that the story of life you live, actually stretches from before time and to beyond it, and that your story is not your years existing as a person, but actually God’s story; the story of your family and how they found their Abba Father.
It changes your whole mind set to think that within this family we are the generations of sons & daughters that have inherited what was worked for by the Israelites, The Apostles, The Celtic Church, The Coptic Church, The Catholic Church, of Martyrs, Dreamers, Wrestlers, Thinkers, Game-Changers, of Jews, Arabs, Greeks, Africans, Europeans. All of whom were doing what we attain to, to find a way of living the story, that continues the work that Jesus began, in Glorifying the Father, through the Holy Spirit.
For many of these giants the process of growing in their story was painful. Isaiah spoke that ‘The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around you.’ – These giants had to deal with real areas of struggle in progress, this came from their own self-doubt but also their contemporary’s objection. Particularly where no president had been set before - the Jewish ‘bed’ was too small for the uncircumcised Gentiles until Paul brought his message of circumcision of the heart. These paradigm shifts have continued throughout the history of our story, when our old wineskins cannot take the new fruit that God is bringing forth.
Over the past months in Turkey I’ve been brought closer to our family in two ways - time and place. In Selcuk you literally live among history, it loses its textbook and becomes part of your town. Our Paul and John also did life here, you look out at the same views, at the same clouds which rained on them, and feel the same sun that shone. It’s made it easier to value how the story went on from this place, touching a certain green & pleasant land that gave birth to our side of family.
To call all these great saints family is a privilege and inspiring, to look back at what they achieved, the people they encouraged, and their legacies in the places they made home. We look at the way in which they made sense of God, the ways they did family, the cultures they were born into, the way they struggled in their story, the theological angles they wrestled with, the sacrifices they made, the new heights they took our perspective of God to, and the depths to which God restored and provided for them.
Like Mr Newton we stand on the shoulders of these giants, who have walked in this story so far and we look to how we can keep telling and inspiring the story to our own kids. To see how God can be more fully revealed in our own chapter - in the time and place we live. To the people that can’t tell a story of a God who sought after them, who fought for them, who died for them and who brought them back to a place of belonging to a family whose rich story we are a part of.
