It was time to get off the ship today, literally and figuratively. The servers have noticed I’m the only one who comes to breakfast with his laptop and almost always orders water, even for dinner.
I told one of the servers the first day that like a finely tuned Ferrari, you couldn’t put just anything in this gas tank. Then this morning at breakfast when I ordered water again, the server gave me a look that was something between sarcastic and dismissive. The honeymoon is apparently over.
I offered different itineraries to the team today, all of which was more ambitious than what we settled on, but in the end Bamburgh Castle was what they wanted to see. So, that is where we went.
In fairness to The Wife, we arrived here a little late in the day on our 2018 tour, and the castle had already closed. She had wanted to come back to see what she had missed.
So, we rented a car in Edinburgh. The Avis agent asked me if I could drive a stick shift. I thought, “Is the Pope Catholic? Can Lewis Hamilton drive an F1 car?” But then I thought he might not know if the Pope was Catholic or who Lewis Hamilton is, so I settled on “Yes.”
When we settled on Bramburg Castle, I did require a moment of group prayer where we asked the Lord to guide us if He wanted us to see any other sites on our drive today. I think the Lord likes such prayers, and the more we invite Him into our lives the more we will experience His presence.
A little more than halfway to our destination, I saw a sign pointing left for a golf course I had never heard of. We were near the coast of the North Sea and I thought it had to be a links course, so I suddenly turned left off the generous two lane road, down a little single lane road into the country side.
When the group asked where we were headed, I told them I was following the lead of the Holy Spirit. As it turned out, we got lost, never found the golf course, and had to retrace our steps back to the road we left. Ann insisted this was evidence I had not heard the Holy Spirit, but the Lord does not always lead us down paths with no challenges.
When the Apostle Paul was saying goodbye to the Christians in Ephesus he told them:
“And now, behold bound by the Spirit, I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit solemnly testifies to me in the every city, saying that bonds and afflictions await me.”
Acts 20:22-23
Paul was no doubt special. I don’t believe the Lord usually tells us the bad things that await us. Jesus is the only other example I can think of to whom it was so clearly revealed the difficulty that lay ahead. The Lord must have known Paul could handle it, and that Luke was with him to record it, and that we would ultimately need to read it.
This is why we must reject the temptation to deal with God transactionally–it presupposes we are sovereign and can consider all permutations of reality, when in fact we function with very limited knowledge. Better just to trust in God and in His sovereignty.
Bamburgh Castle, unlike most castles in the UK, has been fully restored and is used as a residence. One of the many Lord Armstrongs–they are numbered “the 1st,” “the 2nd,” etc–purchased the castle and restored it. His descendants live there in a part of the castle off limits to tourists. The rest of the castle is open to the public, for a fee, to walk through and imagine what life was like for the royalty of the past and the monied of the present.
Relevant to our tour was the story of Oswald and his relationship to the castle. Oswald of Northumbria a/k/a Saint Oswald was born the son of a local king in Northumbria (north east England) in 604 A.D. When Oswald was twelve years old his father was killed in battle, and Oswald was forced to flee. While in exile on the Isle of Iona, Oswald converted to Christianity. Oswald then vowed to return to Northumbria and, when he did, to bring the gospel.
Oswald was good to his promise. After winning the Battle of Heavenfield in 634 A.D., 18 years after his exile, he returned Bamburgh Castle, as it existed then, and ruled from there. More about Oswald and what he did after becoming king tomorrow when we journey to Lindisfarne.
Highlights of Bamburgh Castle were the Anglo Saxon Well, the Oswald Gate, and the views. The Anglo Saxon Well is believed to have been here as early as the sixth century and was a place where Oswald prayed and where Saint Aiden baptized new believers. Oswald’s Gate dates back to Oswald’s time and would have been the point of entry to the castle at that time.
We returned to Doxford Hall & Spa early for a rest from our quest, an early dinner, and good nights’ sleep.
Tomorrow: the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. GS