“March on, march on my soul in strength,”[1]
Lord, You are still as careful with us now,
as You have always been,
From the small prayer meeting where it all began,
to the way You placed us in the centre of a thriving student ministry:
where we daily saw Your Spirit move
to fill so many precious hearts:
a two year feast
of never ceasing feasting, fasting, blessing, favour,
that caused so many lives to fledge for You –

Until, that is, You said,
“This time is up,” and sent us different ways:
for Ros to learn her new trade
and for me to leave the fruitful fields and dreaming spires
and head off to the new challenge of being alone with You,
in a place where I had no connections:
in a city with walls,
and a church with promise,
and a mission that had yet to be defined –
yes, it’s right here at St Paul’s that I am speaking of!

But first that awesomely dreadful day when
You spoke a word of Abrahamic challenge to our soul:
“I want you to lay each other down,
and neither write nor speak with one another again
unless or until I give the word.”

March on, march on my soul in strength,
though this was but a day of small beginnings,
before You sent me out on missions far and wide
to call the Body of Christ to pray and seek Your face,
and I was as much aware of tears and weakness as of glory days,
all the while missing Ros!

I spent those three long months
in the city-eerie You led me to[2],
perched high above the city walls
not passing the days in endless ministry as in Oxford days
but rather in a new way of prayer and writing,
and making fresh connections,
first with Steven and Hazel
and Jeremy and Angie, and Simon and Margaret here,
law college contacts first and foremost,
and all then with all of you at St Pauls,
and in the prayer group up the road that I formed,
where Terry and Carol first gave themselves to Christ,
little knowing the African harvest that later years would one day ensue,
as Your evolving purposes skipped and danced so many paces on,

With sovereign skill You brought musicians into my life,
meeting up again with Linda
whose songs so touch the heart,
and with Richard and a troupe of fine musicians
with whom I learnt to share the song of the Lord.

But would the Lord restore the one he had taken from me?
I spent some days on fast retreat
before the longed-for meet up came:
a Christmas rendez vous that marked the end of exile
and trembling renewed our contact face to face,
our journals showing how closely we had tracked together.

Restored this time for lasting good,[3]
our engagement began on Granny’s birthday,
(plus eighty something years of course)!
for she alone had known ahead of us
that we were destined for each other’s arms.

The engagement proved somewhat over long,
the way to Chester being barred to Ros,
but day one beyond her exams
saw her marching down the aisle.

March on, march on my soul in strength,
Deborah sang, and these were years
when the ministry waxed and grew.

And this was when You provided us with a house to call our own,
through the sovereign grace of a Building Society supremo,
and of Vicky Crawley, then a singleton,
who declined to buy the house that would soon be ours
because the Lord had told her plainly, “This one is for a family,” –
and she had the good sense to obey,
leaving us to own the house where we would lay our young,
a dramatic birth indeed for Ruth,
which resulted in our doctor deliverer inviting us to a holiday home
that would soon became our favourite Lakeland tryst.

The prophet[4] said to us:
“God will alternate your life
Intensely out on active service
and then intensely in on private retreat.
That will be the balance of your lives.
But oh such trials I see ahead –
I shudder for you both.”

This was not quite what we wanted to hear,
and soon everything began to dip
as God refined His holy purposes.
How awesomely vulnerable we felt
as You brought certain longed for hopes to naught.
It was a case of “catch the waves, and use their power to pray”,
or be swamped by Atlantic green sweeping through our lungs.

At just this juncture a life defining moment:
as the call God came from the Father’s heart:
‘I have a message, I have a pen,
I need a writer. If you are willing I will be with you.’
And so my love for words found fresh expression
as each of you knows very well.
A friend had warned before we married,
‘Beware Rob’s books: they spread.’
He never spoke a truer word!

Publications began to flow,
to teach and warn.
The Hindu challenge to the Church,
the Prophets Haggai and Daniel,
the Call to Pray together
to live and move in the power of Elijah, and
to draw near to the ways of eternity.
Such writings consumed my days
and vast amount of hours,
for “nothing that is written without effort
is ever read with pleasure.”
Strewn along the way, delightful sorties
into fictional worlds,
that made for great delight.

Why is it that He brings such lovely things
from fallow ways that seem so full of failure?
To demonstrate His power of course,
and to keep the glory where it belongs!
We have seen this pattern many times,
but this was where we learned
that if we aimed wider in our prayers
God tended to take double care of all our needs.
This we saw repeated times
as we pioneered the art of interweaving worship, word and prayer,
though there still remains much ground to take
to help people take this wider view.

This was when You took Rosalind by the hand
and inserted her into the midwifery world,
that would lead to high adventure on the slopes of Mount Midwifery,
equipping and releasing her in the power of word and prayer
to a calling all her own.

So the blessed Chester years sped by,
until You ordained another stage,
for in truth it had become a strain,
being quite so active
both in city and around the world.

So it was that God began to hint
that a little more remote would suit Him fine:
He spoke of the nestling green and purple Shropshire hills
He would take us to,
where we would be based,
and others would come
to find their faith released.

Our brother Rob, of Rob and Nancy fame,
heard the word ‘Ludlow Town.’
Seasoned traveller though he was,
he had to fetch a map to discover where it was –
little knowing that quite incognito
we had headed off that very day
to scour the Ludlow zone.

‘Try 21 New Road,’ You whispered,
and we found it was for sale.
You looped us to that country place
via the years in Ludlow town,
where You restored the contemplative strain
that the pace of life had caused to fade,

March on, my soul, march on,
this richer deeper intimacy making easier the other strains
reminding us of Your sure and certain purposes.

A new day dawned
as the Lord turned the pages of this sovereign saga.
Now God launched Rosalind into the deep
to pioneer an independent way of helping women birth,
staying close until they bore their child,
and by God’s grace received a touch from the Maker of their souls.
The call sent shivers down her spine,
while others scoffed and said it wouldn’t work.
Wisdom still proves itself by actions,
and the call gained grace and favour –
though all the same, I think I’ll form a club for nervous husbands
who pray and wait for their midwife wives
who advance far out on thinnest tendril sprigs!

Then once again we had a dummy run
as we sought to acquire
the country house He oft times had spoken of in prophecy,
yet which failed to emerge when we made our pitch.

Egg on face, and hand on heart,
had we got the whole thing wrong?
Yet this was but a dummy run,
the precursor of more, as You placed us with
pinpoint precision midway from work in Wales
to the people you wanted us to meet elsewhere.
So many godly things took place in the
Mowbray Lodge years that could only have occurred right here –
the Aga working overtime to provide
the best of meals for praying hordes.
Busy years made the richer by Jeannetta and Anna
in more ways than one poem can recount.

Meanwhile You built a fresh new team
and sent me out to those in search of more,
to plant Your word in hungry souls.
To all things a season and a reason,
and You made these retreat and travelling years exceeding rich,
until one day You dropped a new disturbing note
that I hoped You didn’t mean:
“How would you feel,” Sue Lindsey asked,
to lay this down and move away for Me?”

Now that was not a comfortable thought,
especially when Rosalind saw an advert in the journal
and sensed the call to apply up north.
Compared to dreaming spires, Chester once had felt remote;
and rural Shropshire one step more,
but Shetland’s windswept isles?
That felt completely past the pail!

Our lives have taken many a wiggledy twist,
but this was now the strangest of them all.
Who else would think to advance
towards the centre by ministering from the margins?
Your Spirit prepared the way, as only He can ever do,
with Ruach touch and Ruach house[5]
You ushered us into an entirely different phase of life –
and one that had not one jot in common with what we had known before.
Our hearts felt stunned by the suddenness of the change,
even though You had signposted the way.

Early in the course of this journey north
You made it clear the time had come to lay our previous ministry down
that You had built over one full score years.
When you say “stop”
It does not pay to argue long.
‘God is pleased with this step’ counselled Ian Cole on our final night;[6]
‘because He alone knows the fruit that will come from it.
Just as we ourselves have recently known,
may I wish you all the very best of deaths!’

So silently I saw the train gliding into the station,
and people stepping out,
Some alighting to join other trains
but many others staying faithful for when the Spirit called again,
which He soon would do in the unexpected north.

Grace, grace, all is grace in the way Your Spirit leads,
and Rosalind loved the Shetland women
who flowed through the labour room door
more than any she had known before
with a deep and aching heart.

So perfect a connection presented the Dour One
with an open invitation for wicked defiance,
and fiery darts rained down against her calling
with the ferocious intensity,
that the Lord had warned they would,
even as we made the long journey north
in the teeth of a howling winter gale.

Time indeed for the soul to muster every last ounce of strength
and then somehow to march on –
or at least to cling on tight,
as the pain at work intensified for Ros,
and I received the call to pick up the baton
to summon the northern nations to seek God’s face.
So utterly impossible this task appeared,
yet long foretold and envisioned in Your heart.
No self-made plan this venture to the north,
though some had yet to be convinced,
for no such work had yet been done
on Shetland’s blessed isle.

Dig deep, breathe hard, take time,
You sent enough of everything to tide us over,
and yet another rocky building enterprise
that outstripped even the mountainous call to renew Mowbray Lodge.

And then as suddenly as the call had sped us north,
You reversed the flow
and sent us skedaddling south to warmer climes,
though Rosalind left in tears,
greeting for the island’s special hues.[7]

March on, my soul, march on in strength,
although the time had come to pause and regroup,
with slower pace and time to reflect,
made possible by kind friends’ sacrifice:
the nearly Shetland coastline of glorious Devon
though with fewer outer strains,
for now the time had come to let our souls unwind.

Until, that is, the day when Rosalind read an advertisement,
In the self-same journal,
and all once more began to change.
“Oh not another move,” I cried,
as horror thoughts of crates and packing cases
filled my mind with images of sealing tape
and disorderly piles of dustbin bags.
But with sure and certain touch
You drew Ros from the stethoscope to the lecture podium,
and to those invigorating tutorials that are sending
envisioned souls out to fill midwifery wards.

Once more You inserted us
into a dwelling custom made,
with a daring all Your own,
and a precision that makes us gasp.

One dark night new dangers thrust themselves upon us:
as spasm after spasm
assailed and numbed Rosalind legs and hand,
bringing us the liveliest concern.
Right in the throes of this terrible time,
an angelic presence filled my car
while travelling France,
Confiding that it was time to lay down this phase of life
and be prepared to pick up a new
brick-laying Kingdom labour.

When Your Spirit knocked again and asked,
“Will you lay down what you are doing
and serve me in some new way?”
I blinked a weary eye, aware that in all decency I could not link
the words ‘no’ and ‘Lord’ in any self respecting sentence –
although I did just mention that the last time You spoke such words to me,
You sent us on to Shetland,
and did You have any particular piece of Antarctica in mind this time?

Though I did not know it then,
You were summoning me to embark
on a season I had not walked before,
combining years of pastoral experience
with the skills of a writer in residence.

Lord, however long this season lasts,
fill each day with more of You,
so that all that You would wish to do
may have its day and release Your ways.

And when this season too has passed,
may Your rock-solid pin point leading
never leave us high and dry.
Grant us rather the confidence to tread the stepping stones
that You have already positioned for us to find,
and as we make our way along these all but submerged stones,
and follow the outworking of these golden threads,
that oft times trace back to seeds You planted long ago,
in the consummate knowledge
that growth would come in the proper time.

The time will come when another cross-roads looms,
and we will wait to see how Your plan will progress,
Abraham set out but once not knowing where he was going,
but this will make at least five such times for us.’
The life of a Levite requires fleetness of foot as well as strength of mind,
to trust not only that God will get it right,
but that His people will do so too.

What a chance this is to thank
the many who have supported us on the way
to make this pilgrimage possible.
Please stay with us as we round the coming corner,
and wait to see what God would have us do.

Shine a bright light, Lord, on motives as well as deeds,
to favour that which comes from You;
and to let the beauty of Your peace
lead each precious life represented here.

Let nothing in us or others:
distract or divert us from seeing this journey through.
For the Spirit You have placed within us,
yearns to fulfil Your highest will.

As surely as you have been both friend and Comforter,
Guide and Conductor,
continue to excel Yourself in the years to come,
so that each one of us is inspired to live for You.

But we can only make this courageous crossing
with the help and care of praying friends,
and as we take this time to dedicate ourselves afresh
to You and to each other, we pray,
increase Your power, Lord, on this day, and far beyond –
and may we daily sing this song,
“March on, my soul; my soul be strong.”


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