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The recent storms have transformed the shorelines. Myriad stones, rounded by the pounding of the waves, have been thrown up onto the sand along with multitudes of shells, the remains of countless creatures that have lived and died in the life-giving waters of the world’s seas and oceans. Stones like these have found their way on to the Centre’s publicity material where they conjure creativity in many who come across them. They made a particular impact on me as I reflected on the morning’s sermon on Jeremiah’s letter to the captives in Babylon exhorting them to ‘seek the welfare of the city’.

Politics and economics have conspired to bring many peoples to our shores down through our history – Vikings, Normans, English, Scots, Chinese, Indian, and more recently, our European neighbours. We haven’t always reacted well, nobody does. In ones and twos we can cope, we welcome the ‘stranger’ in our midst, and it’s relatively easy to apply this principle from Moses’ teaching. In larger numbers a threat is perceived and therefore resisted, and the rest, as they say, is history. Violence and war at worst, discrimination and alienation at best, are often the immediate outcome of the confluence of cultures.

But time tells a tale; who now knows their Norman or Viking origins in the British Isles? We might actively cultivate our Gaelic or Ulster-Scots ‘cultures’ but Chinese, Indian and Italian cuisine are an undisputed ingredient in our national cuisine. Music, film and television, all reflect a melting pot of cultures that predates globalisation, global warming and our sense of being in a global village.

And yet we feel threatened by the ‘stranger’, we so easily see ‘us and them’. What do we have that, in the long run, we couldn’t do without if we lost it or had it taken from us? Daniel and his friends lost everything when they were taken as prisoners to Babylon. Jeremiah told them to commit themselves to life for generations to come in their new situation. They could have let go of their faith but they deliberately, prayerfully and sacrificially chose to hold on to it. And the result? Babylon benefited from their involvement at a very high level in government, and one of the kings, Nebuchadnezzar, got to know God.

For us? On the one hand, we can ‘seek the welfare of our city’, and for ‘city’ let’s be generous and include all the political entities from local to international level which we have the opportunity to contribute to and influence. On the other hand, when we feel threatened by the ‘stranger’, loving God, our neighbour, ourselves and our enemies – knowing that nothing can separate us from God’s love for us – are familiar commandments. What have we to lose? Jesus’ and Paul’s teaching tell us clearly what is of lasting value in the Kingdom.

And the stones and shells on the shorelines? In the fullness of time they may become rocks that form our landscape or the soil in which our crops grow. Transformation is slow and painful, but fruitful, if not to us, then to others.

Ethel White