CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: Very difficult times can paradoxically be ‘a good thing for your faith’
I write lots of words about Christian life: the big ideas, the metaphors, the angst over issues of faith and doubt. Talking to Carolyn Cload however, reminds me that Christian faith is thoroughly down-to-earth.
In Carolyn’s case, literally down-to-earth. Currently, she’s lecturing in maths and engineering at UHI and working on a PhD, but a civil engineer by profession, she really enjoys working outdoors, whether surveying rivers or on a construction site.
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She was site engineer on the Ullapool waste water treatment plant, and helped design the River Ness flood defences in Inverness.
In her leisure time, Carolyn is equally down-to-earth, whether enjoying the therapy of trees and hills, or mapping out a course for the Inverness Orienteering Club of which her husband Laurence and two daughters are also members.
As a teenager in Wemyss Bay, Carolyn realised that she would have to decide whether what she’d learned about God was real and true. ‘I thought it probably was,’ she tells me matter-of-factly.
Later, at Heriot-Watt University, Carolyn was involved in the Christian Union, and realised that there was more to Christianity than ‘just head knowledge of God and turning up on a Sunday’. She began to read the Bible regularly, was part of a small group for mutual encouragement in faith, and went on short-term mission teams with the TEAR Fund charity to the Dominican Republic and Burkina Faso.
Carolyn is down-to-earth about her experience of God. There is ‘certainly not a constant sense of God every day’. There are times, she tells me, when in her Christian practices ‘I’m just going through the motions without thinking seriously… but I have belief, and there are other times when I feel very close to God.’
Often, she says very difficult circumstances can paradoxically be ‘a good thing for your faith, because you find yourself relying on God more, praying more’.
Carolyn’s faith makes a difference in her everyday life, prompting her to be ethical and honest, to interact with empathy when encouraging students, to avoid negativity and unhelpful gossip. She approaches professional challenges confident in her own knowledge and skills, but also open through prayer to God’s support.
And so Carolyn’s down-to-earth faith affects the way she lives, the way she does her work, and the impact she has on those around her.
But I can’t resist one metaphor. I imagine Carolyn setting up control points on a course for orienteering, a sign to those who follow that they’ve read the map correctly, they’re on course, Carolyn has been this way. Much as the Jesus she follows, our down-to-earth God, finds ways of reassuring us: ‘It’s all right! You’re still on track! I have gone ahead of you!’
