Dear everyone,

Warm Greetings. I want to empathize to you all that the effectual, fervent prayers of so many on my behalf continues to bring me inestimable comfort. Thank you all so much. I now move on from another round of the new Chemo drug and my condition remains stable.

I truthfully report that I have known a very deep, indefinable joy as I face the unknown. I realize the seriousness of my condition and do not write lightly of it but the joy of the Lord is very real to me. I do tire easily and am seeking only to do those things that my strength allows. Writing is particularly my open door and I am going through it as the Lord leads me. More of that soon.

In the meantime I thought I would pass on to you my tribute to my Uncle Wesley, killed by a runaway horse at Castlewellan Show, back in July. I trust it will encourage those of you who teach young people the things of God because they go deeper than we think.

Millions of us remember Alistair Cooke, who in his lifetime became a broadcasting legend and whose famous Letter from America presented all that was best about the country he eventually chose to live in. I counted his broadcasts one of life’s treasures. His was an achievement that has never been matched. Alistair lived into his nineties. He spoke of God being nothing more than ‘a consoling myth’ but also admitted that he could be wrong. His wife Jane would demand to know of her daughter Susie, who became a Congregational minister, “How can you believe in God and science? ‘How can you not, Susie replied?’”

Alistair gradually transmuted into Susie’s most enthusiastic promoter. Did he, she wondered, envy her the certainty of her faith? “He told me once”, she said, “that hardly a day went by without his remembering a verse of Scripture that he learned at the age of eleven or twelve.’ Who knows but God how that verse was used in Alistair’s life as he faced eternity?

1. Source: Alistair Cooke ; The Biography by Nick Clarke, Weidenfield & Nicolson, London , 1999, pp. 520-528.

A Tribute to my Uncle

Our family have farmed in Aughlisnafin for over two centuries and nobody ever epitomised life in this hidden and beautiful area of South Down around the Moneycarragh River better than my Uncle Wesley. As children we used to play in his flax dam, make tunnels in the bales of hay in his barn and swing on the best rope swing on the island of Ireland that hung enticingly from a branch in the huge oak tree in his yard. We chased mice amid the stooks at harvest time, as he made sure the huge belt of the old orange painted harvester did not entangle us. And how we loved it when the lemonade man would drive his van up the long lane and Uncle Wesley would stock up. We always maintained that Hazel was weaned on white lemonade!

Living in his home before electricity came to Aughlisnafin while my parents built a new home in Newcastle how well I remember going to bed up the narrow stairs, holding a candle that made memorable shadows on the little bedroom wall. I remember the damson tree outside the window and Uncle Wesley’s vine that he nurtured in his greenhouse and the taste of the grapes that flourished there. I often sat proudly on the mudguard of his grey Ferguson tractor as he carefully ploughed his fields as flocks of birds followed us. One of Uncle Wesley’s heroes was Harry Ferguson of Dromara and his incredible engineering feats that changed the face of agriculture around the world.

Family Christmas’s at his home were something else. The table groaned with delicious food because his sisters Lily and Ruth and his sister-in-law, Eleanor and his wife Elizabeth were among the best cooks in the land. And every year we played Uncle Wesley’s most famous game. It was memory game and it was also played whenever a crowd of visitors went to his home for any kind of major gathering! It was called ‘A good fat hen and about she goes!’ This was the first line that must be repeated with all the others that followed without mistake or you were out!

A good fat hen and about she goes.. he would say… then came ..
.. two ducks ..a good fat hen and about she goes… and then …
three grey screeching wild geese..two ducks.. a good fat hen and about she goes etc .

When visitors arrived at… four flat bottomed fly boats flying up the lake of Genesarret or… six Anti-Deluvian Patriarchs with their beards well dipped in the gold of Ophar, we split our sides laughing at attempts people made to pronounce it all. I have seldom seen as much innocent laughter in my life!

Uncle Wesley was famous for his humour. If he were flying with a Hedley Murphy tour of Israel, there he would be in the heart of it all with his jokes and stories. If he was at a wedding or wherever he was to be found in some corner surrounded by happy people.

But although full of fun, he had his serious side. He did not shirk the call of the Gospel, the best news in the world, and he became a follower and disciple of Jesus Christ. As children we remember him at the Sunday School at Ballywillwill Gospel Hall leading the singing. He taught us of a cleansing fountain deep and wide, of the wise man who built his house upon the rock, and I can still hear him sing,

‘She lost it; she lost it,
That little piece of silver,
She sought it, she sought it,
Wherever could it be?
Under the carpet, down by the door,
Into the cupboard,
All over the floor,
Until she found it, she found it,
How happy she would be,
How happy are the children who are found by thee.

’Nothing brought him greater pleasure than seeing young people trust Christ as their Saviour and Lord.

He remained deeply faithful to the Lord Jesus and supported all those who preached the Gospel wherever they were found. No sectarian spirit ever dominated his Christian witness.

He had a particular skin growth in his hand and when he went to the RVH the surgeon asked him if he had any connection with the Vikings. It seems they had the same growth in their hands. Fascinatingly a few years later a member of the McNeill family in New Zealand was tracing the genealogy of the family and asked Uncle Wesley for a DNA sample. He gladly gave it. Incredibly it established that he was part of an unbroken male line to the Vikings! That certainly proves that our family were not always Unionists! I always maintain that he had the bluest eyes you ever saw, inherited by my daughter Claire - proving their Scandanavian origins!

Just last Wednesday my Uncle Wesley rang me up on the phone. He was very courageously fighting cancer and was deeply concerned about mine. It was obvious from his conversation that life since Aunt Elizabeth died had proved extremely lonely for him because they were deeply devoted to one another. The Scripture says that ‘we know not what a day may bring forth’ and Uncle Wesley’s heartbreaking and tragic death has totally stunned us all, far and wide. I am sure, though, as he crossed the River of Death the words of Mr. Stand Fast from The Pilgrims Progress are more than apt:

‘I see myself’, said Stand Fast, ‘now at the end of my journey, my toilsome days are ended. I am going to see that head that was crowned with thorns, and that face that was spat upon for me. I have formerly lived by heresay and faith but now go where I shall live by sight and shall be with Him in whose company I delight myself. I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of; and wherever I have seen the print of His shoe in the earth, there I have coveted to set my foot too. His name to me has been as a perfume-box; yea, sweeter than all perfume. His voice to me has been most sweet; and His countenance I have more desired than they that have most desired the light of the sun. His word I did use to gather my food, and for antidotes against my fainting. He has held me, and hath kept me form mine iniquities; yea, my steps hath he strengthened in his way.’
‘Glorious it was to see,’ says Bunyan, ‘how the open region was filled with singers and players on stringed instruments, to welcome the Pilgrims as they went up, and followed one another in at the beautiful gate of the city.’

Uncle Wesley has left a legacy that will linger as long as Aughlisnafin remains and as for him, he has gone to his eternal reward.

In the fellowship of the easy yoke,

Derick