As a guest contributor to Farming Life’s ‘Good News for the Countryside’ column today, the Moderator, Dr David Bruce, writes about surprises – the good and the not so good surprises that life throws up, and an historic surprise visited on his family nearly 90 years ago. He also writes of the greatest surprise of all.

From time to time life can throw up the odd surprise. An unexpected good turn, an act of kindness, a letter (remember those things), or an email from a friend completely out of the blue. Then there’s the surprise that comes in a softly spoken cautionary tone, and a knowing look, followed by a, ‘I think you better sit down…’ Not all surprises are welcome.

While we have to factor in the unknown, actually knowing what is round the corner is somewhat reassuring. The rhythm of life on the farm, governed by the seasons, season-by-season, reminds us that, “He made the moon to mark the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down” (Psalm 104:19).

Gathering in the harvest

With Wednesday’s equinox, this week saw the start of autumn, so as we move into this ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,’ as Keats put it, farmers across the countryside will continue to gather in the harvest, with thanks soon to be given in many a harvest service in rural churches up and down the land. Hopefully there will be no surprises weather wise, and it will hold until it is all safely gathered in.

It would have been a busy time for my forebears. My grandfather, Howard Bruce, was a farmer from Bellaghy. He farmed land that had been in the family since the 1700s. Howard married Isobel Gallagher, a farmer’s daughter from Ramelton in County Donegal. My grandmother was a feisty lady, and I remember her fondly.

Her family sold up in the years leading to partition, only to acquire a new farm on the northern side of the soon to be drawn border, just outside Londonderry. A century on, I am not sure if the Gallaghers saw what was coming, or they were surprised by the turn of political events.

‘Gallagher’s Field’

What they couldn’t have foreseen was the surprise that was to visit my grandmother’s brother, and his family, a decade later, when on a misty morning in May 1932, a small red plane circled their Ballyarnott farm before landing in ‘Gallagher’s Field’. No ordinary plane. No ordinary pilot, for it was Amelia Earhart – the American aviatrix, who on landing became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. That surprise brought the world to the farm that particular weekend.

Like life itself, the Bible is also full of ‘surprises’ and ‘wow’ moments, as we would see them. For example, God promised Abraham that He would make him “…into a great nation…” (Genesis 12:2). An old man with no children? But we learn that “…[F]rom this one man came as many descendants as there are stars in the sky, as many as the numberless grains of sand on the seashore (Hebrews 11:12). Surprising? Not for God, for as we read in Matthew 19:26 Jesus tells us, “‘…with God all things are possible.’”

One of the greatest surprises visited upon someone in the Bible, outside of the news carried by the angel Gabriel to Mary (Luke 1:26-38) was probably Lazarus. Having died - with his family grieving around his tomb – he found himself miraculously brought back to life by Jesus (John 11:1–45).

But the greatest surprise of all, is that regardless of who we are, or what we have done, just as autumn follows summer, God loves us. It is a fact, and He offers us forgiveness, demonstrating it in this way “…While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 8:5).

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Dr Bruce is Secretary to the Council for Mission in Ireland. In February 2020 he became moderator-designate, having been selected by PCI’s 19 regional presbyteries when they met separately across Ireland. As a result of the Coronavirus emergency, which necessitated the cancellation of that year’s General Assembly, on 1 June 2020 he was officially elected and installed as Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland in a special livestreamed ceremony by the members of the Standing Commission of the General Assembly.

In February 2021, it was announced that Dr Bruce would be nominated to the General Assembly to serve a second term of office. He will, therefore, be the first serving moderator since 1894 to serve a second consecutive term. You can read more about Dr Bruce here. This blog first appeared as a column in today's edition of Farming Life.

You can look at other blogs in this series here.