Today is National Grandparents Day
This is a repost of one of my first posts from 2020, in which I share some precious memories of a place where the seeds of my faith were sown before I was even born.
This morning in my devotions I was reminded of a place dear to my heart. It was where my grandparents and their children worshipped and several years later where I was baptised. Bethany Hall was an independent brethren fellowship who held firmly to God’s Word as their authority.
The location of the fellowship was a working class mining community called Lochore, where life was hard. The hall was built by the members sacrificial giving at “a penny a brick.” I remember with fondness some of the old brethren who had worked hard in the local coal mines but who always found time to study the Word of God. One dear brother whose knowledge of the Word astounded me, was truly a man of God in my opinion. One day I asked him how he knew God’s Word so well; “I write it all down Alan,” he told me! Literally every day as he read the Bible he wrote it down in spiral bound notebooks. I remember him showing me his collection of notebooks one Sunday dinnertime; I was amazed at the effectiveness of it. Such faith has always inspired me.
My most enduring memory of Bethany Hall is the verse “God is Love” (1 John 4:8). It was a verse that was laid out in white concrete lettering in a flower border next to the hall, it was sloped to face the main road so all could see it as they passed by either on foot or by bus to Lochgelly. It was a verse that was often repeated in my early years by my grandparents and my mother. It was the one Bible verse that became ingrained in my mind and my heart.
It seems quite incongruous that men who worked long hard hours mining coal should hold dear a verse that speaks so plainly of love. But what these simple folk learned and held dearly is that all love comes from God. That love covers all circumstances and life; it is God’s greatest gift to all mankind.The chapter of 1 John 4 is one of the most inspiring portions about love in the Bible.
“And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” 1 John 4:16
Dear reader, it is little wonder that these hard-working folk seized on this amazing gift of God and held it dear to themselves. They shared it with their fellow miners and the whole community that passed their gospel hall garden. I am personally grateful that they also shared the Good News of God’s Love with their children and grandchildren; they leave us an example worth following today.Watch on YouTube – God is Love
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