Kirkspire article february 2008
St Andrew’s Church egmore
stargazers
Murdoch MacKenzie
As we continue our series on symbols in and around the Kirk, this month we are invited to lift up our eyes to the heavens. As I write this we are still in the season of Epiphany when we remember the Magi, the wise men from the east, who followed the star to Bethlehem. They were stargazers as were the Scottish people who built St Andrew’s church and set stars in the dome high above our heads to remind them of Scotland and the northern sky on St Andrew’s night!
Likewise Job who is asked to stop and ‘consider’ God’s wonders – the clouds, the lightning, the spreading out of the skies, the south wind, and the sun (37:14-21), and whether he can bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion? (38:31). The Psalmist says: ‘When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him?
Whilst the builders of the Kirk knew full well that the Most High does not dwell in houses made by people (Acts 7:48) they thought fit to encourage the worshippers to lift their eyes to the heavens some 54 feet above them to ‘the azure sky, the canopy of heaven, represented by the stucco of the dome coloured with lapis lazuli.’ This is part of the brief which the Chief Presidency Engineer of Madras, Fiott de Havilland, was given when he was asked to draw up plans for the building of the Kirk.
What a wonderful brief! The dome of the Kirk, the third largest unsupported dome in Asia, is like an observatory. As we gather on Sunday mornings and lift up our eyes and our hearts we can remember Jesus, the bright morning star, (Revelation 2:16), and with the prophet Malachi remember that for those who revere his name ‘the son of righteousness shall rise with healing in his wings.’ (Malachi 4:2)
As the Celtic saints remind us; ‘He is the sun behind all suns.’ So let us consider the heavens and finally let us remember that the English word ‘consider’ actually means ‘to look at the stars’ coming as it does from the Latin sidus, sideris which means ‘a star’. So when, with Jesus, we consider the lilies of the field and how they grow, or consider anything, we are really stargazing, as we see God all around us.
The Venerable Bede (673-735 AD) wrote the following words in Northumbria
Christ is the Morning Star
Who, when the night
of this world is past
brings to his saints
the promise of
the light of life
and everlasting day.
Murdoch MacKenzie
As we continue our series on symbols in and around the Kirk, this month we are invited to lift up our eyes to the heavens. As I write this we are still in the season of Epiphany when we remember the Magi, the wise men from the east, who followed the star to Bethlehem. They were stargazers as were the Scottish people who built St Andrew’s church and set stars in the dome high above our heads to remind them of Scotland and the northern sky on St Andrew’s night!
Likewise Job who is asked to stop and ‘consider’ God’s wonders – the clouds, the lightning, the spreading out of the skies, the south wind, and the sun (37:14-21), and whether he can bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion? (38:31). The Psalmist says: ‘When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him?
Whilst the builders of the Kirk knew full well that the Most High does not dwell in houses made by people (Acts 7:48) they thought fit to encourage the worshippers to lift their eyes to the heavens some 54 feet above them to ‘the azure sky, the canopy of heaven, represented by the stucco of the dome coloured with lapis lazuli.’ This is part of the brief which the Chief Presidency Engineer of Madras, Fiott de Havilland, was given when he was asked to draw up plans for the building of the Kirk.
What a wonderful brief! The dome of the Kirk, the third largest unsupported dome in Asia, is like an observatory. As we gather on Sunday mornings and lift up our eyes and our hearts we can remember Jesus, the bright morning star, (Revelation 2:16), and with the prophet Malachi remember that for those who revere his name ‘the son of righteousness shall rise with healing in his wings.’ (Malachi 4:2)
As the Celtic saints remind us; ‘He is the sun behind all suns.’ So let us consider the heavens and finally let us remember that the English word ‘consider’ actually means ‘to look at the stars’ coming as it does from the Latin sidus, sideris which means ‘a star’. So when, with Jesus, we consider the lilies of the field and how they grow, or consider anything, we are really stargazing, as we see God all around us.
The Venerable Bede (673-735 AD) wrote the following words in Northumbria
Christ is the Morning Star
Who, when the night
of this world is past
brings to his saints
the promise of
the light of life
and everlasting day.
Murdoch MacKenzie