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Dear J,

It's good to be writing to you again. I have to say that the weather here just now is just plain awful. It is cold and wet and my forthcoming holiday seems doomed! We are spending July in Yorkshire in the Victorian holiday resort of Scarborough. Do you remember "Scarborough Fayre" by Simon and Garfunkel? Well it is that very place! Along the north beach they have little huts that can be occupied during the day for a small fee. They have rickety tables and chairs and a kettle and look out to sea. They are a very old fashioned pastime, reminiscent of the days when the British male arrived at the beach took of his jacket, rolled his shirt sleeves to the elbow, the trousers to the knee, knotted the four corners of his large white handkerchief and placed it on his head to provide sun protection, and slumped into a deck chair.

Although this has become a caricature in the U.K., I have in truth seen many people do exactly that! Braces and all! All of this is by way of an explanation as we have booked one of these beach huts for the first week of the holiday, thus fulfilling a childhood ambition and one I need to fulfil before they knock them down altogether! However it looks as though the weather might keep us indoors! If you want to take a peek at where we are going you might try http://www.yorkshirecoast.co.uk

I loved the news about Zoe. I even printed this bit out and showed it around the family dinner table! Jennifer loved it!

I still don't understand why you would have male cat called Zoe! I know you told me what it meant but the email seems to have disappeared without trace from my hard drive. Can you tell me again?

And after that totally unconnected start I won't even begin to try to make a link into what I wanted to share with you. It is about the persistence of Prayer! It is about keeping going in prayer.

I was preparing my sermon for Sunday and I came across the passage in Luke 18 where Jesus tells the parable of the persistent widow. To save you looking it up it goes like this:

Luke 18:1-8

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. 3And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'

4"For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!' "

6And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"

Anyway it got me thinking about the need to keep on praying at all times and how important it was that you should know that and not give up!

When I first went to Islay as a Minister I was very young and green. I needed older and wiser counsel. In the little village of Portnahaven nestling in a horseshoe around the bay in the remotest corner of a remote island I found a man who had newly retired. His name was Alisdair (that's the Gaelic form of Alistair) Hay. He became a very firm friend in God and kept me from putting my foot in it on a number of occasions. He had been at sea all his life. His face was deeply lined and tanned to golden leather. Thick white hair and lively eyes were powerful first impressions. He was a Gaelic Scholar, a Mod singer and a deeply Christian man. Every night of his life, when at home, his wife would go to bed an hour before him. He would put on a large peat he had cut himself, draw his chair close to the fire and read his bible and pray. He did exactly the same when at sea. He would crawl into his bunk, pick up his small battered Bible and lie there and read and pray.

Over the years he prayed for many thousands of things, I guess, but there was one prayer he always said. He said it every night for 46 years! He asked that the Lord would bring his wife to faith. She was a lovely woman but wouldn't darken the door of the church. Every night he asked the Lord. Then in 1981 as the autumn gales began to sweep the island she came with him one Sunday to Church. After that she came every week.

The following summer out on the moor, cutting peat, Alisdair's heart gave out and he went home to be with the Lord. It was a hot July day. But I knew as I travelled home from holiday, some four hundred miles, to conduct his funeral that at least his greatest desire had been fulfilled and I would find a widow who knew the Lord.

I guess that's what you call persistent prayer!

Awhile back I was talking about the way we come to Jesus. While I was choosing the praise for Sunday I came across this hymn from the book "Mission praise". It is very short and was written by a man called Dave Bryant.

Is that good or what?

Jennifer is on early lunch and I have to make the sandwiches before she comes home so I guess I should end it there. I hope these hurried thoughts hit the mark.

Every Blessing,

Stuart

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