Rubble! A rubble hill is all that remains of Irvine’s Magnum sports centre, once Europe’s largest leisure centre, with ground breaking flumes. As a Largs teenager in the 70’s me and my pals happily swam, slid & skated within its walls. The 90’s and early 2,000’s saw me & my kids in and out for entertainment, fun & games, Saturday mornings especially memorable in the pools, followed by slush-puppies. For over 25 years our Fullarton Foulers’ fitba 5’s enjoyed shin-kicking, goal scoring and handshakes after every game. But, like Irvine’s nearby ‘Blue Billy Bing’, residue from an industrial past, which kids used to clamber over, even the rubble will be gone from sight.

In ‘The Last Word’ movie Shirley MacLaine, a retired successful business woman entertains suicide due to boredom and isolation, fruit of her compulsive controlling character which exiled and estranged her from family, colleagues and potential friends. Obituaries in her newspaper rudely waken her to the pile of rubble and wrecked relationships her death will leave behind. So, she aims to manipulate her memory by employing the obit’ writer (Amanda Seyfried) to prepare her tribute before she kicks the bucket. The heart warming tale leads to the realisation that real, honest, loving, caring relationships is what one wants to have a life distilled to. What will your life, my life, our lives add up to?

“As parents feel for their children, God feels for those who fear him.
He knows us inside and out, keeps in mind that we’re made of mud.
Men and women don’t live very long; like wildflowers they spring up and blossom, But a storm snuffs them out just as quickly, leaving nothing to show they were here. God’s love, though, is ever and always, eternally present to all who fear him, Making everything right for them and their children as they follow his Covenant ways and remember to do whatever he said.” (Psalm 103:13-18 / MSG)

Human life is but a blink in history. What’ll be left once you’re reduced to ashes or buried? God’s Word here suggests that opening to God’s Love can teach us to love and be loved forever. Jesus Christ confirms this, that ‘In Christ’ we are promised a lasting legacy, a life, not reduced to rubble, rather renewed by God’s everlasting sacrificial love.

“So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always “me first,” doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end.” (1 Corinthians 13:3-7 / MSG)