URC Daily Devotion for 2 9 2025
Notes from Small Islands 2: Integration, Autonomy, Sovereignty?
Lamentations 1: 1 – 3
How lonely sits the city
that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become,
she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
has become a vassal.
She weeps bitterly in the night,
with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers
she has no one to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her,
they have become her enemies.
Judah has gone into exile with suffering
and hard servitude;
she lives now among the nations,
and finds no resting-place;
her pursuers have all overtaken her
in the midst of her distress.
Reflection
The Biblical history of the Jewish people is concerned with what we might now call their constitutional status. The Jewish people were, variously: slaves in Egypt, nomads, invading army, loose confederation of tribes with no ruler, unified monarchy, divided nation beset by civil war, vassal to foreign powers, defeated and exiled nation, renewed country, and then dominated, divided and destroyed by Rome. Kings attempted to manage this, prophets discerned meaning within it, and the people muddled along as best they could hoping for better times. Today’s passage reflects the defeat and exile of the Jewish leaders to Babylon after decades of vassalage and trust in precarious foreign alliances.
Over the modern period many peoples have sought to run their own affairs. As empires broke up, new nations emerged (or re-emerged). The map of Europe and Africa have changed in our lifetimes; youngsters now may not even have heard of the USSR, Yugoslavia, or Czechoslovakia. A live topic in many island jurisdictions is their constitutional status; some of our islands are counties, others part of wider council areas, and some are almost independent as Crown Dependencies. Provision exists in Scotland for Island Authorities to have more devolution (but they’ve not yet asked for it wondering if autonomy would be better and some dream of Crown Dependency status.)
The autonomy of Congregationalism is at the very heart of the URC – until a congregation needs help, or resources, when the integration of Presbyterianism becomes attractive! The Jewish people in all their various forms of existence, were, and still are, God’s people, called to be a light to the nations and be faithful to the covenant. The countries and islands in these isles the cartographers call British face competing demands for their futures – back in the EU or not? Further devolution or not? Independence or Crown dependency status? Whatever our constitutional futures are, as Christians we, like the Jewish people, are called to give faithful witness to the one who transcends all our human divisions.
Prayer
O God of earth and altar,
bow down and hear our cry,
our earthly rulers falter,
our people drift and die;
the walls of gold entomb us,
the swords of scorn divide,
take not thy thunder from us,
but take away our pride.
GK Chesterton