Weekday Devotion With Pastor Chris

* WARNING STAR WARS SPOILER ALERT* lol

The Iveragh Peninsula on the southwest coast of Ireland, offers breathtaking scenery along with the highest peak in Ireland.  The “Ring of Kerry” is a winding, coastal road that takes you in a great circle around the peninsula.  When we drove the Ring several years ago, one of the highlights for us was standing on a high cliff looking out across the ocean towards the Skellig Islands.

     The Skellig Islands were made famous here in the United States when one of them, Skellig Michael, showed up in a couple of Star Wars movies.  It served as the hermitage of Luke Skywalker who found his way there to live in exile after his Jedi students were killed by Kylo Ren and his Knights.  In the movie the island was called Ahch-To, and it was not only the birthplace of the Jedi Order, but also held the ancient Jedi texts.

     Well, that might be more Star Wars history than you wanted.  But Skellig Michael was a striking choice for Ahch-To both for its geography and its history.  In fact, it was its geography – essentially a twin-pinnacled crag rising out of the sea – that led to its history.  “Skellig” is from the Irish “sceilig” which means a splinter of stone.  And that’s what Skellig Michael looks like from a distance; steep-sided and narrow.

 

Skellig_Michael By Jerzy Strzelecki  CC BY-SA 3.0

     The island consists of about 54 acres.  It is a mile around, and climbs to 714’ above sea level.  A monastery was founded there in the sixth century.  The monks’ beehive stone dwellings are still in remarkably good condition, and were featured prominently in the movie.  Situated high above the ocean, those dwellings can still be accessed by a steep flight of stone steps that rise up from three different landing points along the shore.

     In his tour guide, Rick Steves calls Skellig Michael “the Holy Grail” of Irish monastic island settlements.  He quotes the great Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw who called it “the most fantastic and impossible rock in the world.”  Monks lived on that impossible rock for more than 500 years.  Viking Olav Trygvasson, was baptized there, and would later go on to bring Christianity to Norway and become its king.

     But why would monks choose such a desolate place to begin with?  Their life would have been harsh and simple; collecting rainwater in cisterns and living off the fish and birds around the island.  Certainly, the isolation was at least part of the reason.  One strain within the monastic tradition has long been separation from the world in an effort to grow closer to God.  But another, more practical reason, may have been the natural defenses which the island offered.  Before Brian Boru finally defeated the Vikings in the Battle of Cloontarf in 1014, Viking raids wreaked havoc throughout Ireland for nearly two hundred years.  The steep sides and narrow steps of Skellig Michael forced those approaching the monastery to come in single file, and gave the monks above an enormous advantage.

 

     When we look at that island and consider what those monks endured year after year in their pursuit of God, it puts any sacrifices we might make in perspective.  God was everything to them.  He was that pearl of infinite value, more than worth whatever price they had to pay.  Not everyone, of course, is called to the monastic life, but their loving devotion does raise the question, “What is the Kingdom of God worth to me?  What price would I be willing to pay in the pursuit of God?”

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Matthew 13:45)