What will you take with you?

Back in April, I had the opportunity to return to London for a five-day visit. From my American perspective, that city's history is simply "off the scale." To get a sense of that scale, one of its' newer buildings, the current Saint Paul's Cathedral, was completed a little after the founding of the city of Detroit over 300 years ago.

Among the stops that I made was to the Museum of London, only a very short distance from the site of John Wesley's Aldersgate experience in May of 1738. The exhibit which captured my attention at the Museum of London was a remembrance of the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London in September, 1666.

There were a lot of artifacts from that era in the exhibit that day. Many were books which provided eyewitness accounts of the fire. Another artifact was a charred brick from Pudding Lane, where the fire started (pictured here). This brick "experienced" that fire; We were allowed/encouraged to touch that brick and connect ourselves with its history. There was a large backlit timeline of the fire as well as an interactive map which showed the spread of the fire in old London, a city which in 1666 was mainly made up of wood-constructed buildings.

As I walked through the exhibit, the dimension of human suffering that fire caused became clearer and clearer. The Great Fire wasn't a fictional story. It happened to real flesh and blood people, whose lives were turned upside down so very quickly. It is estimated that 70,000 out of 80,000 buildings were destroyed by the fire in a matter of only a few days. Thousands lost their homes and their livelihoods. The official death toll stood at six, though historians suspect the death toll could have been much larger, possibly in the thousands as the fire would have hidden the evidence of those deaths. Thomas Goodwin, a Puritan minister of the era, lost a sizable part of his large, personal library. In walking through this exhibit, you could feel the near sense of panic those Londoners felt to halt the fire. They had nothing resembling modern fire-fighting equipment. Buildings were purposely blown-up to act as a buffer from the fire's further spread.

One part of this exhibit that got my greatest attention had to do with a small wooden chest. Many of those Londoners, during those frightful September days, knew that the fire would shortly destroy their homes. They might have hours, perhaps minutes, to take a handful of earthly possessions with them and flee from the oncoming fire. The exhibit pointed this out so well. That small wooden chest I saw was like the ones those desperate people would have used to carry a handful of earthly possessions to safety. Next to the replica trunk, the exhibit sign (which encouraged an interactive approach to the tour) read:

Pack your trunk. Save your belongings from the Great Fire! Time is short and space is limited so you could only choose THREE things. What will you take? What is most precious to you? Or most useful?

I've asked myself that same question over the last several months. If I were in a situation from which I had to flee for my life and could only take three things, what would they be? From the safety in which I currently live, I think that I'd like to take with me a copy of the Bible, some notecards, a few pens and a copy of Thomas Goodwin's 1651 book "The Heart of Christ." (I know that's more than three items but shirt pockets come in handy).

"What will you take with you?" is a question which millions have people have asked  in the past and in the present moment in the face of fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, wars, political upheavals and disasters, both natural and human-made. In recent weeks, a series of hurricanes and earthquakes have devastated many of the Caribbean islands as well as parts of Mexico and the parts of the states of Texas and Florida in the United States. Catastrophes have a way of sifting out the important from the unimportant in our lives. Like Thomas Goodwin's library, very valuable things, perhaps irreplaceable things, will be lost. Yet, things to which we have been attached seem less important as a result, perhaps even garbage-worthy.

Several years ago, the Detroit area encountered a "storm of the century" which resulted in local freeways being flooded out and thousands of families, including my in-laws, experiencing something which they never faced before, several feet of water in their basements. Family treasures and memorabilia, safe and dry one week, became water- logged items for the next week's garbage pick up.

Eventually, each of us will face circumstances when we will be forced to leave the place we live. Perhaps we will have years, or months or days to prepare for it. For some, like Detroit's "Storm of the Century", it will come quickly and unexpectedly. To that place we are going, we cannot take even one of our earthly possessions. That moment, will be the moment of our death. We will leave time to enter into eternity. As we flee from this world, we can take no earthly possession. Yet, we can take a heavenly one. In your spiritual version of the Great Fire of London chest, carry with you a love and trust in God in Christ. It is your only sure possession which will last you now and for eternity.

Saint Giles Cripplegate

Less than a mile from John Wesley's house and chapel is Saint Giles Cripplegate. This church is one of the few medieval churches which still stand in London. There has been a church on this site for a thousand years. A very simple chapel stood on the site during Saxon times. A larger church building was constructed around 1090 AD. Just over three hundred years later, the essence of the church which stands there today was built.

Since that time, there were three major fires in the church which required extensive re-construction. One in 1545, a second in 1897 and the third in 1940. In researching our trip to London, I saw some photographs of what the church looked like around World War 2. The roof was gone and the church appeared to be shambles. Once again, my wife and I were given a lesson on the impact which historical events can have on a city. The church, as well as the surrounding neighborhood, was devastated by German bombing at the start of the war. A building which is only a few hundred feet from Saint Giles bears a commemorative cornerstone which states that the first bomb dropped on the City of London fell on that site in August of 1940.

Saint Giles was vastly renovated after the war. If you look up at the roof, you see what looks like ancient stones walls which are covered by relatively new looking ceiling beams.

The church, like the Wesley chapel, has numerous memorials in it. We learned that several people are buried in the church, such as John Foxe who wrote Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, as well as John Milton, who wrote the classic “Paradise Lost” and the lesser-known “Paradise Regained.”

Cripplegate was a large gate for the old London City Wall. St Giles was less than a city block away from it. The gate itself goes back to Roman times when the city of London was founded by the Romans in 43 AD. The location of this gate took on significance for a group of English non-conformists during the 1660s.

During this time though, the non-conformists met at 7 o’clock every morning at Cripplegate for what they called Morning Exercises. Think of this as an outdoor church service. I knew that the gate itself has been gone for a few centuries now. However, I was hoping to find a blue historical plaque marking the site. Construction and renovation work was in progress on the site so that even the historical marker wasn’t able to be seen. However, a large section of the old wall is still visible from just outside St. Giles and at the building by the Cripplegate site. Since there were restrictions on where the non-conformist ministers could operate legally, I am reminded of the passage in Hebrews 13:11-13 which tells us that Jesus suffered “outside the gate” and that we are to “go to Him outside the camp.” The non-conformist ministers, likewise, had to go “outside the camp” of the old walled City of London do to the work to which God called them. While large sections of the old wall still exist, it was again a surreal experience to know that we were standing by the same wall that many godly people stood by, morning by morning, to practice their faith as they believed they must, and to hear the Gospel “outside the gate.”

In the next entry, I will briefly discuss what is known today as "Big Ben."

John Wesley's Prayer Room

My wife Julie and I had the opportunity to visit London for six days last month. We saw a lot of sites which are tied to Christian history. I want to take the opportunity to revive the use of the School of the Solitary Place blog to recap some highlights of the trip. 

The site I will discuss in this entry is John Wesley’s Chapel and House. Both are open to the public. The Chapel was built in 1778 to replace Wesley’s original chapel known as the Foundery. Wesley’s house was built one year later. The Chapel is remarkable place to visit. There are numerous memorials to those who in some way contributed to this place of worship. There are also a number of other features which have been added or modified over the years, including a communion rail donated by Lady Margaret Thatcher who served as the UK’s Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990 and was married in the chapel in 1951.

My wife and I were impressed as our tour guide indicated that services at Wesley’s chapel were never meant as a replacement for the services of the Church of England. John Wesley was a faithful Anglican priest throughout his life. Services at the Chapel were intended to supplement what was happening at Anglican services.

One facet of history which I find so intriguing is that of having some form of contact with a person, place or event of history. At Wesley’s chapel, we had, right in front of us, the very pulpit from which John Wesley preached while in London during the last twelve years of his life. For myself, what I found even more intriguing was standing in Wesley’s house, just next door to the chapel.

Being able to take in history in this way provides a dimension which reading simply does not give. My wife and I were able to see the cabinet with Wesley’s theological library. We were told that Wesley was in the habit of writing in his books with comments on what he was reading. Not only does having these books give us an insight to Wesley but his comments allow us an added perspective into his thinking as well.

John Wesley was a strong advocate of physical fitness. He had a rather interesting, hand-driven device which would generate a small electrical current. It was thought at the time that small amounts of electricity were beneficial to the body. Thus, Wesley had his own electricity-generating device which still exists and is on display at the house. He also had a spring-driven chair from which you had to push up a little harder to get out of the chair. It’s not quite a home gym from the 21^st century but still rather impressive for a late 18^th century home.

Perhaps what was the most moving part of the tour at Wesley’s chapel and house was being able to step inside John Wesley’s prayer room. In this room, just off his bedroom, Wesley prayed every morning at 4am. This room has been called the “Powerhouse of Methodism” due to Wesley’s consistent, fervent and disciplined prayer life in that room. Actually being able to stand in this very room was a great reminder to both my wife and me of the importance and power of a life of consistent, fervent and disciplined prayer.

One of the great treasures we found while at the Wesley house was the gentleman who was our tour guide. He was very engaging and gave us a good lesson in the value of those who have living memories of an event. Any city or region is shaped by the times and circumstances which the people of that city or region experienced. For a city as old as London, that is particularly true. Our tour guide made reference to the bombings which London endured in the course of the Second World War. Our guide mentioned one night, when he was ten years old, while living in an area west of London, that on one particular night in 1940, he could look east and see a reddish glow off the horizon. He told us that the glow was not the first light of dawn but the light coming off the fires happening in London due to the incendiary bombing it faced. My wife and I are thankful that a gentleman who is 84 years old was able to relate to us what it was like to be in England at that time. What a wonderful living treasure.

Next time, I will examine our visit to Saint Giles Cripplegate.