Two Stones

On Sundays since Palm Sunday we have been meeting to pray for this land prompted by Transformations Ireland. Initially as a pair of couples and then, by Zoom, six of us meet to pray for an hour and finish by kneeling in prayer. As a change last Sunday, Lynne had a sense that we needed to pray for the rivers of Ireland starting from our local one that flows through Chris and Lynnes’ land.

So at 230pm, four of us set out in County Sligo. Our friends in Mayo did their own river prayer walk, and we were to be joined by another couple.

Lynne read Psalm 126, from ‘The Voice’ translation.

We sang Psalm 24 “Swing wide the gates”. We prayed our prayer of expectation to God, not knowing what He had in store for us as we began adventuring upstream in the water. We walked under the bridge that Chris and Mark had built in the weeks previous. The river was low, there not having been proper rain since the washout that was St. Patrick’s day. At our starting point the river was about 4.5m wide and the depth there was between 15 and 30cm, but, upstream there were places it was over a metre deep.

We were dressed in trainers and shorts as we knew we were going to get wet. The water was cold but not freezing and we got used to it quickly.

Five minutes into our damp ramble Chris bent down and retrieved a flat rock that was sticking out from the gravel of the riverside. He thought it was a slate, and that it resembled the shape of a tree and he wanted to share his find. But as he held it up it wasn’t a tree shape we saw but a man’s face in profile. Chris carried it back to our starting point so we could retrieve it later (it being too heavy to carry).

We splashed on, past a confluence of the streams that had separated just ten metres further because a tree had fallen across the flow; our first real obstacle. We climbed onto the horizontal trunk, weaved through the branches and then had to step down unto a large submerged stone then, with Chris’ help, step to find shallow water at the edge of the flow.

We rounded another bend and again Chris reached down into the water for another flat stone. This one bigger than the first and as the water flowed from its surface its shape was revealed…it was the elongated map of Ireland! There was even a square indentation close to where Lough Neagh should be! We were astounded. That God would send us on a river walk to find treasure like this. Chris carried the stone until we arrived at the rear of Noel and Jackies’ place, he left it there for safety.

Noel and Jackie joined us as we walked further upstream. Noel came the best prepared of all of us, he had a rucksack with emergency rations, a camera (most of us had left phones behind in case they got wet!) and best of all a Bowie knife with a 30cm blade, “Eat your heart out Bear Grylls!” It did actually see some use as we had to push through some low hanging branches.

We continued on chasing little minnows and young brown trout (only 6- 14cm) as we walked, unfortunately, we only glimpsed one bigger mature trout. The fish were swimming ahead of us and then darted back past us, they gathered in shoals in deep pools under the river banks, thinking we wouldn’t see them… We blessed the river with life as we walked. Chris had shared how Bill, Noel and Lynnes’ father, had regularly on Sunday mornings gone to the river and caught trout for Sunday lunch in decades past. “May the river’s fruitfulness return Lord.”

We past the rear of a number of properties, we prayed blessings on the inhabitants.

Chris playfully marched forward in one section but then nearly fell headlong into the stream as he had misjudged the depth. Then in shorts soaked up to the crotch he discovered a child’s discarded water pistol and, with glee, discovered it still worked! Not surprisingly it was green, white and orange. Oh, how he soaked us!

Then we would forget he had it and think that the rain had started… “Chris!!!”

The ladies and Noel stepped out of the water at one point to walk through the field alongside as the water got to be about thigh deep. Chris and Mark proceeded on towards the old ford that had become a sort of weir. The ford was now built over by a road bridge. Noel rejoined us there and we pelted him with a bouncy aubergine found floating in river, we honestly thought it would burst on hitting the bridge and shower him in auberginely goodness… it bounced, obviously not ripe enough!

The ladies had to take to the road and rejoined us after we had climbed over a barrier in the river designed to keep livestock in. Chris discovered it was hinged and he could lift a flap to allow the ladies to rejoin us. As he did a large log splashed down from on high into the pool behind him, oh what a righteous baptism!

At this point we noticed the river bed was not gravel but solid rock. We prayed for the bedrock of the island, that God’s Kingdom would come.

Over the next section we had a trio of grey wagtails dance and tease ahead of us as we followed them upstream. They each found a rock, and wagged and nodded to us , then as we got within six or seven metres they leapt into the air to their next perch. Beautiful birds with grey backs, grey wing tops and yellow undersides as if they were en-goldened by flying towards the glory of God, allowing their breasts to face the King of Kings.

We were beginning to tire as the river was cutting a deeper ‘V’ in the surrounding fields and was becoming more rocky and more difficult to navigate. We opted not to kneel for our last ten minutes in the river! We emerged from the river and took the road home, our hearts cheered by the presence of God and His goodness towards us and where He placed us on His good earth.

Later we took time to reflect and to look at the flat rocks Chris had found.

We experienced the joy of the Lord as we splashed and waded and were squirted in the river. We sensed that joy was returning to our land, that joy was going to flow through the land and out to other nations.

Looking at the face stone, it’s detail of the profile of a man’s head even to his Adam’s apple intrigued us.

Even more so, the detail of the Ireland stone, although it looks like an elongated, medieval map, the coastline is clear from Mizzen head, down to the outcrop of Mayo/Galway and down past Limerick to the promontories of Kerry. The depression of Lough Neagh is just a beautiful extra addition.

How many times do you go for a walk and find a map of your land engraved in stone by the hand of the Creator? Or with it, an image of a mans profile! God was at work that day, leading and guiding us and highlighting those particular stones to Chris.

As we have considered them further and met with others over Zoom to compare notes and share what we sensed God is saying a number of thoughts have come…

“The Lord is changing the face of Ireland.”

“The Lord has turned His face toward Ireland.”

“Ireland look to the One your heart desires.”

“The face of the Lord blowing on Ireland.”

We have showed a number of people the stones by Zoom and, by looking at the image of our video on the screen we could see a cross highlighted on the face stone that wasn’t visible under normal light.

Another text came to mind too..