This week on Things Unseen, we've been thinking about places that matter to us sacred

spaces, not because one space is more holy than another, but because there are places

that God seems to make special in our lives and special in our memories, but the blessings

He gives us there, or the lessons He teaches us, or the ways in which He deals with us.

I began on Monday thinking about the significance of the pulpit from which I first heard a sermon

that brought me to faith in Christ from John chapter 8, verse 12, and from which I later

at the privilege of preaching frequently when I became the church's minister. So I thought

it would be a good and fitting way to end the week with another pulpit, 3,800 miles

away as the crow flies. The sacred space and place for me of the pulpit in first Presbyterian

church in Columbia, South Carolina. In common with the pulpit in Scotland, the one I mentioned

on Monday is white, but unlike the Scottish one, this pulpit is an enormous marble block.

Sometimes men in the congregation who had served in the FBI or other agencies would express

to me their concern about my security if anything untoward were to happen in a service,

and I'd enjoy pointing out that with this solid marble protection, I was probably in

the safest place in the whole building. But of course there are other kinds of attacks

that can be directed against the person in the pulpit. But as I look back on preaching

God's word and seeking to feed and save God's people from that particular pulpit, I think

of it as a priceless privilege God gave me. Not just because of the preaching and indeed

not primarily because of the preaching, but because of the privilege of loving the people

of God and sensing the love and affection of God's people in return. Many of them were

like Barnabas' to me, you know, the son of encouragement. I've actually sometimes

known people that I call Sabanrabs. That's actually Barnabas' backwards because they've

...