It seemed to the other elders that Lachlan Campbell dealt hard with young people, especially those who had gone astray, but they learned one evening that his justice at least had no partiality. One elder, Burnbrae, said afterward that Lachlan “looked like a ghost comin’ in at the door.” But Lachlan sat in silence in the shadow, and no one marked the agony on his face till the end.“If that is all the business, moderator, I must to bring a case of discipline before the Session, and ask them to do their duty,” Lachlan began.“It is known to me that a young woman who has been a member of this church has left her home and gone into the far country. There will be no use in summoning her to appear before the Sessions, for she will never be seen again in this parish. I move that she be cut off from the roll, and her name is—” Lachlan’s voice broke, but in an instant he recovered. “Her name is Flora Campbell.”Carmichael the minister confessed later he was stricken dumb, and that Lachlan’s ashen face held him with an awful fascination. It was Burnbrae who first found a voice: “Moderator, this is a terrible calamity that has befallen our brother, and I’m feelin’ as if I had lost a little one o’ my own, for a sweeter lassie dina cross our kirk (church) door. None o’ us want to know what has happened or where she has gone, and not a word o’ this will cross our lips. Her father’s done more than could be expected o’ mortal man, and now we have our duty. “It’s not the way o’ this Session to cut off any member o’ the flock at a stroke, and we will not begin with Flora Campbell. I move, moderator, that the case be left to her father and yourself, and our neighbor may depend on it that Flora’s name and his will be mentioned in our prayers, every mornin’ and night till the good Shepherd o’ the sheep brings her home.”Burnbrae paused and then, with tears in his voice—men do not weep in the Scottish glen of Drumtochty—added, “With the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption.”The minister took the old man’s arm, led him into the manse (minister’s home) and set him in the big chair by the study fire. “Thank God, Lachlan, we are friends now; tell me about it as if I were your son and Flora’s brother.”The father took a letter from an inner pocket with a trembling hand:Dear Father,When this reaches you I will be in London and not worthy to cross your door. Do not be always angry with me, and try to forgive me, for you will not be troubled any more by my dancing or dress. Do not think that I will be blaming you, for you have been a good father to me, and said what you would be considering right, but it is not easy for a man to understand a girl. Oh, if I had my mother, then she would have understood me and I would not have crossed you. Forget poor Flora’s foolishness, but you will not forget her, and maybe you will still pray for me. Take care of the geraniums for my sake, and give milk to the lamb that you called after me. I will never see you again, in this world or the next, nor my mother.(Here the letter was much blotted.) When I think that there will be no one to look after you, and have the fire burning for you on winter nights, I will be rising to come back. But it is too late, too late. Oh, the disgrace I will be bringing on you in the glen. Your unworthy daughter, Flora Campbell“This is a fiery trial, Lachlan, and I cannot even imagine what you are suffering,” said the minister. “But do not despair, for that is not the letter of a bad girl. Perhaps she was impatient and has been led astray. But Flora is good at heart, and you must not think she is gone for ever.”Lachlan groaned, the first sound he had made, and then he tottered to his feet. “You are kind, Master Carmichael, and so was Burnbrae, and I will be thankful to you all, but you do not understand. Oh no, you do not understand.”Lachlan caught hold of a chair and looked the minister in the face. “She has gone, and there will be no coming back. You would not take her name from the roll of the church, and I will not be meddling with that book. But I have blotted out her name from my Bible, where her mother’s name is written and mine. She has wrought confusion in Israel and in an elder’s house, and I have not daughter. But I loved her, she never knew how I loved her, for her mother would be looking at me from her eyes.”The minister walked with Lachlan to the foot of the hill on which his cottage stood. After they had shaken hands in silence, the minister watched the old man’s figure in the cold moonlight till he disappeared into the forsaken home, where the fire had gone out on the hearth, and neither love nor hope was waiting for a broken heart. The railway did not think it worthwhile to come to Drumtochty, and the glen was cut off from the lowlands by miles of forest, so manners retained the fashion of the former age. Six elders, besides the minister, knew the tragedy of Flora Campbell and never opened their lips. Mrs. Macfadyen, who was Drumtochty’s newspaper and understood her duty, refused to pry into this secret. The pity of the glen went out to Lachlan, but no one even looked a question as he sat alone in his pew or came down on a Saturday afternoon to the village shop for his week’s provisions.“It makes my heart weep to see him,” Mrs. Macfadyen said one day. “So bowed an’ distracted, him that was so tidy and firm. His hair’s turned white in a month, and he’s away to nothin’ in his clothes. But least said is soonest mended. It’s not right to interfere wi’ another’s sorrow. We must just hope that Flora’ll soon come back, for if she does not, Lachlan’ll no be long wi’ us. He’s sayin’ nothin’, and I respect him for it; but anybody can see his heart is breakin.’”Everyone was helpless till Marget Howe met Lachlan in the shop and read his sorrow at a glance. She went home to Whinnie Knowe in great distress. “I was woesome to see the old man gathering his bit things wi’ a shaking hand, and speaking to me about the weather, and all the time his eyes were saying, ‘Flora, Flora.’ “It’s laid on me to visit Lachlan, for I’m thinking our Father didna comfort us without expecting that we would comfort other folk.”When Marget came round the corner of Lachlan’s cottage, she found Flora’s plants laid out in the sun and her father watering them on his knees. One was ready to die. He was taken unawares, but in a minute he was leading Marget in with hospitable words: “It’s kind of you to come to an old man’s house, Mistress Howe, and it’s a very warm day. You will not care for spirits, but I am very good at making tea.”Marget spoke at once: “Master Campbell, you will believe that I have come in the love of God and because we have both been afflicted. I had a son, and he is gone; you had a daughter, and she is gone. I know where George is an am satisfied. I think your sorrow is deeper than mine.”
“Would to God that she was laying in the kirkyard; but I will not speak of her,” Lachlan answered. “She isn’t anything to me this day. See, I will show you what I have done, for she has been a black shame to her name.”He opened the Bible, and there was Flora’s name scored with wavering strokes, but the ink had run as if it had been mingled with tears. Marget’s heart burned within her at the sight, and she would hardly make allowance for Lachlan’s blood and theology. “This is what you have done, and you let a woman see your work. You are an old man, and in sore travail, but I tell you before God, you have the greater shame. Just twenty years o’ age this spring, and her mother dead. No woman to watch over her, and she wandered from the fold, and all you can do is to take her out o’ your Bible. Woe is me if your Father had blotted out our names from the Book o’ Life when we left His house. But He sent His Son to seek us, an’ a weary road He came. I tell you, a man would not leave a sheep to perish as you have cast off your own child. You’re worse than Simon the Pharisee, for Mary was not kin to him. Poor Flora, to have such a father.”
“Who will be telling you that I was a Pharisee?” cried Lachlan, quivering in every limb and grasping Marget’s arm.“Forgive me, Lachlan, forgive me. It was the thought o’ the misguided lassie carried me, for I did not come to upbraid you.”But Lachland had sunk into a chair and had forgotten her. “She has the word, and God will have smitten the pride of my heart, for it is Simon that I am,” he said. “I was hard on my child, and I was hard on the minister, and there is none like me. The Lord has laid my name in the dust, and I will be angry with her. But she is the scapegoat for my sins and had gone into the desert. God be merciful to me, a sinner.”So Marget knew it would be well with Lachlan yet, and she wrote this letter:My dear Lassie,You know that I was always your friend, and I am writing this to say that your father loves you more than ever and is wearing out his heart for the sight o’ your face. Come back, or he’ll die through want o’ his born. The glen is bright and bonny now, for the purple heather is on the hills, and down below the golden corn, wi’ bluebell and poppy flowers between. Nobody will ask you where you’ve been or anything else; there’s not a child in the place that’s not wearying to see you; and, Flora, lassie, if there will be such gladness in our wee glen when you come home, what think you o’ the joy in the Father’s house? Start the very minute you get this letter; your father bids you come, and I’m writing this in place o’ your mother. Marget HoweMarget went out to tend the flowers while Lachlan read the letter, and when he gave it back, the address was written in his own hand. He went as far as the crest of the hill with Marget and watched her on the way to the post office till she was only a speck on the road. When he went back into his cottage, the shadows were beginning to fall, and he remembered it would soon be night.“It is in the dark that Flora will be coming, and she must know that her father is waiting for her.” He cleaned and trimmed a lamp that was kept for show and had never been used. Then he selected from his books Edwards’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and on it he laid the large family Bible out of which Flora’s name had been blotted. This was the stand on which he set the lamp in the window, and every night its light shone down the steep path ascending to Flora’s home. It was only by physical force and strength of personalities that the Kildrummie passengers could get on the train at the junction, and the Drumtochty men were always the last to capitulate. They watched the main line train disappear in the distance, then broke into groups to discuss the cattle sale, while Peter Bruce, the baggage handler, drove his way through their midst with large pieces of luggage and abused the passengers by name without respect of persons:“It’s most aggravatin,’ Drumsheugh, that you all stand there complainin’ about the prices, as if you were a poor cottage body that had sold her a cow, and us twelve minutes late. Man, get into your carriage.”
“Peter’s in an awful excitement tonight,” Drumsheugh responded. “You would think he was a mail guard to hear him speak.”Peter escaped this winged shaft, for he had detected a woman in the remote darkness. “Woman, what are you stragglin’ about there for out o’ a body’s sight? I near set off without you.”Then Peter recognized her face, and his manner softened of a sudden. “Come away, lassie, come away; I didna know you at the moment, but I heard you had been vistin’ in the south. The third car is terrible full with the Drumtochty lads; you will maybe be as handy in our second car.”And Flora Campbell stepped in unseen. Between the junction and Kildrummie, Peter was accustomed to wander along the bootboard, collecting tickets and identifying passengers. He was generally in fine trim on the way up and took ample revenge for the insults of the departure. But it was supposed that Peter had taken Drumsheugh’s withering sarcasm to heart, for he attached himself to the second car that night and was invisible to the expectant third till the last moment.“You’ve had a long journey, Miss Campbell, and you must be nearly done with tired; just you sit still till the passengers get away, and the good wife and me would be proud if you took a cup o’ tea wi’ us before you started home. I’ll come for you as soon as I get the train emptied and my little chores finished. Peter hurried up to his cottage in such haste that his wife came out in great alarm. “Na, there’s nothin’ wrong; it’s the opposite way this night. You remember Flora Campbell, that left her father, and none o’ the Drumtochty folk would nay anything about her. Well, she’s in the train, and I’ve asked her up to rest, and she was glad to come, poor thing. So give her a hearty welcome, woman, and the best in the house, for ours will be the first roof she’ll be under on her way home.”Mary Bruce’s hand sent a thrill to Flora’s heart: “Now I count this real kind o’ you, Miss Campbell, to come in without ceremony, and I’d be terrible pleased if you would do it any time you’re travelin.’ The rail is ordinarily fatiguin,’ and a cup o’ tea will set you up.” And Mary had Flora in the best chair and was loading her plate with homely dainties. No one can desire a sweeter walk than through a Scottish pine wood in late September. Many a time on market days Flora had gone singing through these woods, plucking a posy of wild flowers and finding a mirror in every pool; but now she trembled and was afraid. The rustling of the trees in the darkness, the hooting of an owl, the awful purity of the moonlight in the glades, were to her troubled conscience omens of judgment. Had it not been for the kindness of Peter and Mary Bruce, which was a pledge of human forgiveness, there would have been no heart in her to dare that woods, and it was with a sob of relief she escaped from the shadow and looked upon the old glen once more. Beneath her ran the little river, spanned by its quaint, old bridge; away on the right the parish kirk peeped out from a clump of trees; halfway up the glen, the village lay surrounded by patches of corn; and beyond were the moors with a shepherd’s cottage that had her heart. Marget had written to Flora for her dead mother, but no one could speak with authority for her father. She knew the pride of his religion and his iron principles. If he refused her entrance, it would have been better for her to have died in London.A turn of the path brought her within sight of the cottage, and her heart came into her mouth, for the kitchen window was ablaze with light. One moment she feared Lachlan might be ill, but in the next she understood, and in the greatness of her joy, she ran the rest of the way. When she reached the door, her strength had departed, and she was not able to knock. But there was no need, for the dogs, who never forget nor cast off, were bidding her welcome with short, joyous yelps of delight, and she could hear her father feeling for the latch, which for once could not be found, and saying nothing but “Flora, Flora.”She had made up some kind of speech, but the only word she could now say was “Father,” for Lachlan, who had never even kissed her all the days of her youth, clasped her in his arms and sobbed out blessings over her head, while the dogs licked her hands with their soft, kindly tongues.“It is a pity you don’t speak Gaelic,” Flora later said to Marget. “It is the best of all languages for loving. There are fifty words for darling, and my father will be calling me every one that night I came home.” Lachlan was so carried with joy, and firelight is so hopeful, that he had not seen the signs of sore sickness on Flora’s face. But the morning light undeceived him, and he was sadly dashed.“You will be very tired after your long journey, Flora, and it is good for you to rest. There is a man in the village I am wanting to see, and he may be comin’ back with me.” Then Lachlan went to his place of prayer and lay on the ground and cried, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, and spare her for Thy servant’s sake. Take her not till she has seen that I love her. Give me time to do her kindness for the past wherein I oppressed her. Turn away Thy judgment on my hardness, and let not the child suffer for her father’s sins.”Then he arose and hastened for the doctor. It was afternoon before Dr. MacLure could come, but the very sight of his face, which was as the sun in its strength, let light into the room where Lachlan sat at the bedside holding Flora’s hand and making woeful pretense that she was not ill. “Well, Flora,” said the doctor, “you’ve got back from your visit, and I tell you we’ve missed you most terrible. I doubt the south county folk have been feeding you over well, or maybe it was the town air. It never agrees with me.”Flora put an arm around her father’s neck and drew down his face to hers, but the doctor was looking the other way.“Don’t worry about medicine,” the doctor said. “Just give her plenty o’ fresh milk and plenty o’ air. There’s no livin’ for a doctor with this Drumtochty air; it has not an equal in Scotland. There’s the salt o’ the sea and the cooler air o’ the hills and the smell o’ the heather and the bloom o’ many a flower in it. A puff on Drumtochty air would bring back a man from the gates o’ death.”
“You have made two hearts glad this day, Dr. MacLure,” said Lachlan outside the door, “and I am calling you Barnabas.”When Marget came, Flora told her the history of her letter: “It was a beautiful night in London, but I will be thinkin’ that there is no living person caring whether I die or live, and I was considering how I could die.“It is often that I have been alone on the moor, and no one within miles, but I was never lonely. I would sit down beside a brook, and the trout would swim out from below a stone, and the cattle would come to drink, and the birds would be crying to each other, and the sheep would be bleating. It is a busy place, a moor, and a safe place, too, for there is not one of the animals will hurt you. No, the big highlanders will only look at you and go away to their pasture.“But it is weary to be in London and no one to speak a kind word to you, and I will be looking at the crowd that is always passing, and I will not see one kind face, and when I looked in at the lighted windows, the people were all sitting round the table, but there was no place for me.“Then a strange thing happened, as you will be considering. It is good to be a Highlander, for we see visions. You maybe know that a wounded deer will try to hide herself, and I crept into the shadow of a church and wept. Then the people and the noise and the houses passed away like the mist on the hill, and I was walking to the kirk with my father, and I saw you all in your places, and I heard the Psalms, and I could see through the window the green fields and the trees on the edge of the moor. And I saw my home, with the dogs before the door, and the flowers I had planted, and the lamb coming for her milk, and I heard myself singing and awoke. “But there was singing, oh yes, and beautiful, too, for the dark church was now open. There was a service in the church, and this was the hymn: ‘There is a fountain filled with blood.’“So I went in and sat down at the door. The sermon was on the prodigal son, but there is only one word I remember: ‘You are not forgotten or cast off,’ the preacher said. ‘You are missed.’ And then he would come back to it again, and it was always ‘missed, missed, missed.’“Sometimes he would say, ‘If you had a plant, and you had taken great care of it, and it was stolen, would you not miss it?’ And I was thinking of my geraniums and saying yes in my heart.“And then he would go on: ‘If a shepherd was counting his sheep, and there was one short, does he not go out to the hill and seek for it?’ “And I saw my father coming back with that lamb that had lost its mother. “My heart was melting within me, but the minister was still pleading, ‘If a father had a child, and she left her home and lost herself in the wicked city, she will still be remembered in the old house, and her chair will be there.’ “And I saw my father alone with the Bible before him, and the dogs laying their heads on his knee, but there was no Flora.“So I slipped out into the darkness and cried ‘Father,’ but I could not go back, and I knew not what to do. But this was ever in my ear, ‘missed,’ and I was wondering if God was thinking of me. “‘Perhaps there may be a sign,’ I said and went back to my room and saw the letter. “It was not long before I was on the train, and all the night I held your letter in my hand, and when I was afraid, I read, ‘Your father loves you more than ever,’ and I would say, ‘This is my warrant.’ Oh, yes, and God was very good to me, and I did not want for friends all the way home.”
“But there is something I must be telling,” said Lachlan, coming in, “and it is not easy.” He brought over the Bible and opened it to the family register where his daughter’s name had been marked out. Then he laid it down before Flora and bowed his head on the bed. “Will you ever be able to forgive your father?”
“Give me the pen, Marget.” Flora wrote for a minute, but Lachlan never moved. When he lifted his head he read:Flora Campbell
Missed April 1873
Found September 1873
Adapted from Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush by Ian Maclaren, (Dodd, Mead and Company, 1895). Quoted in Prodigals and Those Who Love Them, Ruth Bell Graham, 1991, Focus on the Family Publishing, pp. 51-63
Scripture: 'Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert' Isaiah 43:19
Of all the scriptures that can be used for knowing what God is doing and for seeking direction in circumstances of uncertainty, this passage in Isaiah gives the reader the most comfort. God is giving an insight of His sovereignty over all things. He is in command of the situation. He is inviting you, the reader to perceive it, to grab hold of it and to watch what happens next.
This passage also encourages us not to rely on previous experiences or strategies to deal with your circumstance. Man would predictably reach into his 'old bag of tricks' to handle difficult tasks. They may have worked in the past and even proved successful. Using them however, or even relying on what God has done before, may no longer be relevant for what God is going to do for this present situation.
Rather, God is demonstrating that His Power rises far above all things. He can afford to apply a different way of delivering a resolution. He has full confidence that using a new approach will not affect the outcome. It will come to pass. While it's something we have not been through before, the situation will not get the better of Him no matter how unforgiving the terrain. In this case, portrayed by wilderness and desert, God provides a means for us to navigate through. When there seems to be no way, take heart in the knowledge that.. there is a way.