"Our Wandering Footsteps Guide"

Our marriage service in Stone Mountain a year ago  opened with that old Scottish paraphrase, "O God of Bethel".  It is a great hymn and was once called the unofficial national anthem of Scotland. The third verse - "Through each perplexing path of life our wandering footsteps guide; Give us each day our daily bread and raiment fit provide" - is certainly a fitting anthem for a diaspora who left Scotland to face an uncertain future, but with a providential belief that God would meet their needs.

 

A year later, Melanie and I celebrated our wedding anniversary in the Scots' Kirk, Paris. The congregation is part of the Church of Scotland's Presbytery of Europe which includes 12 congregations in Europe, one in Bermuda and another in Sri Lanka.  In themselves, these congregations of "the Kirk" are a testament to Scotland's interests in the scholarship and commerce of the continent long before the formation of the modern European Union.  Indeed, Scots were emigrating to the European continent long before 1707 when they acceded to the Act of Union and gained access to England's wealthy colonies in North America.

 

So on the first Sunday of the new year, we were given a very warm welcome by the current minister, the Rev Jim Cowie and his congregation. The congregation was composed of folk from all corners of the globe: Africa, the Carribean, and the far east. Perhaps the diversity of the congregation in that fashionable corner of Paris was shaped by the global influence of presbyterian missionaries from Scotland?

The Parisian congregation has been worshiping on the same site since 1885 and their most famous minister was the Rev Donald Caskie, otherwise known as the Tartan Pimpernell.  A native of Islay, Caskie was minister at the time of the German invasion of France in 1940.  Following the Fall of France he bravely remained to help establish a network of safehouses and escape routes for Allied soldiers and airmen trapped in occupied territory. He was eventually betrayed and sentenced to death, only to be repreived following the intervention of a German pastor. 

Just five days before the fall of Paris on the 14th June, Caskie conducted Sunday worship at the Scots' Kirk.   Writing about that "sombre dimanche" in 1940, he noted in his memoires that "the walls of our little church had become like a strong hand confidently and happily holding us secure from the world".  Before leaving to go their separate ways, the congregation closed the morning service by singing an old Scottish paraphrase to the tune of Salzburg.  Fittingly, it was "O God of Bethel".