H is for HISTORY

History didn't really excite me at school, but that's all in past now! The trouble was that not much of it was relevant to me, a young schoolboy, living deep in the heart of the Orchard county of Northern Ireland. We learned about the Saxons and the Normans, bout the War of the Roses, about Motte and Bailey castles, about 1066 and all that, about Picts and Celts, about cavemen and about Prime Ministers of Britain in centuries gone by. It was all very interesting stuff but the text books that stored all the information were not particularly stimulating and resources amounted to a few old maps or grey sketches of an artist's impression. We had no dramatic reconstructions on video or DVD, no TV programmes, no interactive CDs and not even any all colour books full of vivid pictures. So imaginations worked overtime and if you spent the period daydreaming you had no pictures at all, of that lesson. And the teacher couldn't really make it any more vivid for he or she had been there or lived through what they were trying to make interesting.

As I teach Vikings to young ten year olds this year, they have every resource but a real live Norseman and I could probably get that too if it was needed. They can build a longhouse, construct a longboat, find interactive websites and visitor centres, dress up as a Viking, know what these people ate and drank, study full colour illustrations of every aspect of Viking life and by the end will know more about the Vikings than the Vikings did. But that's not really what brings it to life for them. Instead it's the fact that Vikings were at one stage, very close to our village. Similarly when we studied Victorians last year, it wasn't our Victorian Day or dressing up or even the multitude of colour books that made the biggest impact, but the fact that they could see the ruins of buildings that once were famine hospitals or soup kitchens and walk in the estate whose walls had been built and whose trees had been planted during the Victorian period. You see, in some sense, history only comes alive when we can link it to ourselves.
I think that's why we're all so interested in family trees, in the history of our neighbourhood, out town or local village, why we often love to look at old records of the inhabitants of our townlands and try to link present day names with the past. When dad was live I used to marvel at the local history locked away inside his head. It was my desire to write it all down and so preserve it in some form for the future but I never got round to doing it and while I remember much of what he told me, the intricate details are essentially missing and have gone for ever. I'm not alone in wishing I had taken the time with him for many of my friends feel equally sorry that they did not record their own parents' ramblings about the past, such was the wealth of local history that each could offer. But the other important thing is that they spoke about their history because it was real, because they lived through it and because it happened all around them. For they not only knew the stories, they saw them happen.

I often wondered how they had such a collection of interesting anecdotes on offer but now as I get older myself, I can see why, for there is no substitute for years of living in the middle of what eventually becomes the past. And everyone loves to tell their own history, from the ten year olds in my class, who remember their primary one days but don't know who Princess Diana' was, to their grandparents who came to our recent harvest service and have vivid memories of war rationing. One such grandparent brought in pictures of himself as a squadron leader in the Second World War and while it fascinated the children, he remember it. Like I say, you can never tell it like the one who lived through it.

The disciples had a great story to tell. So much so in fact that many of them wrote it down. It's a first hand account of their encounter with Jesus and it's living history, told through the eyes of those who walked, ate and lived daily with Him, who saw Him heal, teach, be put to death but also saw Him after He had risen. Right at the end of his gospel, John writes, 'This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.' But the whole world doesn't need any more books, for the living history contained in the one book, the Bible, is enough to convince me that Jesus is real, is still alive and is the only way to God. To be honest, He's not history at all!