Berwick Thought for the Week: Amazing Northumberland

Recently while on Holy Island, I was made aware of the fact that I was walking on land where so many saints had walked before me.

Not just St Aidan and St Cuthbert, but also the countless number of nameless saints of the faith who had made a pilgrimage to this special place to absorb the spirituality and reflect upon their life’s journey. It was a very humbling experience.

It took me back to the year 2000 when I was fortunate enough to go on a day trip to Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

I expected to be deeply touched by the church of the nativity in Bethlehem. It was a very beautiful church, and you could sense the generations of prayer that had taken place there, but the place where I was overwhelmed was on the Mount of Olives, where some of the trees are over 2,000 years old.

As I stood there and prayed, I was aware that it was under these same trees that Jesus had wept and prayed before his death and resurrection.

I felt closer to God on that hillside than in any of the most beautiful churches in the world. A place of prayer, a thin place, a touching place, however you describe it, it was a place where for me heaven and earth met.

You don’t have to go into churches or cathedrals, you can walk the paths of the saints along our coast and country, and in those thin places know that God still walks alongside you – just as Jesus did with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and that he hears our prayers wherever we are.

Rev Kim Hurst is the Superintendent Minister of the Lindisfarne Methodist Circuit. She was born and brought up in the North East, training for the ministry in Durham. She has been a Methodist Minister for 25 years, serving in Yorkshire, Cumbria and Malta before moving to Northumberland in 2019.