The Prayer of Aiden

Leave me alone with God as much as may be.

As the tide draws the waters close in upon the shore, make me an island, set apart,

Alone with you, O God, holy to you.

Then with the turning of the tide

prepare me to carry Your presence to the busy world beyond,

The world that rushes in on me,

Till the waters come again and take me back to you.

St Aidan liturgy, Celtic Daily Prayer Book 1, Northumbria Community.

Walking the causeway over from the mainland to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne has been a sacred end to a journey for saints, monks, pilgrims and visitors for well over a thousand years. Today, way-markers direct those willing souls who are keen to walk the route (traditionally barefoot) across the tidal sands. Twice a day, the island is cut off on the high tide.

Aidan was the Irish monk who arrived in Northumbria at the request of King Oswald, after Colman was sent back to Iona. He founded the Lindisfarne Abbey and served as Bishop. He ministered on the island and throughout the northeast region of England in the Kingdom of Northumbria. He died in 651AD and was buried on Lindisfarne beneath the abbey.

For me, Lindisfarne truly is a thin place, a place where I can go to immerse in wild beauty and yet find stillness in my soul as I walk the windswept edges and dwell and pray in a place where prayer has been offered up to God since the 7^th century.

But it is the prayer above, written by my friend Andy Raine, that I find myself reflecting on today. It is indeed a special time to be on the island when the tide rolls in to cut it off from the mainland. There’s a gentle peace that seems to transcend upon the land and all who dwell on her, like a deep exhale that appears to say, now we can rest.

There’s a richness to the ebb and flow of the tide that needs to be mirrored in our own lives with God. The prayer begins with a desire that echoes the heart of King David from his words in Psalm 27:

One thing I ask of the Lord;

this I seek:

to live in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to behold the beauty of the Lord,

and to inquire in his temple.

This means to simply be with God, unfiltered, unadulterated, fully aware and alive to the presence and beauty of the LORD. Our souls are made for beauty, and just as God is Love, we also find him in beauty. Beauty reflects God’s nature and essence.

Resting in God is to heed the words of Christ when he gives his disciples a simple and yet welcome invitation, come away with me for a while. According to Mark’s gospel narrative, the fellas have just been out in pairs, ministering among the villages of the hill country. They returned to tell Jesus all that had happened. In response to their tales he gave them the invitation to go with him to a deserted place and rest. (Of course, that didn’t happen straight away because the crowds found them. Jesus had compassion on the crowd and began to teach them, before performing possibly the most well-known miracle in scripture. It was after that that he dismissed them and retired to a mountainside to be alone with God and to pray.)

If we are to look to Jesus and the rhythms he lived by, this would be a good start. As ministers, pioneers, leaders, and well, all Christians really, there are innumerable missional endeavours we could get involved in, the need is so high in our towns and villages that it would be easy to keep calm and carry on, without the rest, without dwelling in the beauty of God. ‘Compassion burnout’ is really a thing, and the truth is, we’re not made to fix every wrong, meet every need, and address every issue. That’s God’s job and although he invites us to join him, he also invites us to stop, to recognise our need to nourish the soul and allow for some much-needed restoration.

I was with a group of wonderful individuals this week from all over the UK, all in rural contexts. During the conversations, someone mentioned the need for soul-care that is so often neglected in our church leadership.

I’d like to encourage you to consider your own soul care. We’re made for union, to enjoy God and to receive from him the song he sings over us (Zeph 3:17); we’re made to retreat with the pushing tide and come home to him, as we step aside from the world and its troubles for a while; to go with Father, Son and Spirit to a mountainside (or island shoreline, prayer space, favourite armchair, garden, into music or the kitchen – whatever and/or wherever lights the fire in your heart and leads you to peace in Christ), and dwell richly in his beauty. 

Sounds amazing right? Unhurried, permission-giving, laying down the things we carry!! When Jesus called people to follow him, he said a few things that he could view as concerning at first, things about surrendering, having nowhere to lay his head, sacrificing, carrying your own cross, being misunderstood and persecuted……and yet he also said, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Or as Eugene Peterson paraphrases, come to me and recover your life, you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.

Something happens when the tides comes in and we retreat with God and lay down the busyness, to-do lists and all the doing. We remember the first call into love; we sometimes must remind ourselves that God desires to walk with us in the cool of the day. In fact, maybe God simply desires us, to have all of us for himself for a while.

Then of course, the tide eventually turns the other way, the causeway opens and the world has access to us once again. We have compassion for the broken world as our pilgrim feet walk the message of Christ out into the world - we hold space, we light paths, we hear their stories, we nourish others, we care for them, we heal and we love – until the turning of the tide, and Christ whispers to our tired hearts once again, Come away child, and rest awhile.

Jon Timms

Joint CEO, Rural Ministries