As we went to Inchcolm on Sunday I’m taking a break from Rev. Rutherford’s children’s address, and instead looking at a Children’s address from 1st August 1954 on Mortimer’s Deep.
This afternoon boys and girls, some of us hope to go over to Inchcolm for our Annual Service. The boat leaves from the west sands and we sail upstream a bit, there is a channel where the river not only runs faster but also goes deeper – that bit is known as Mortimer’s Deep.
Hundreds of years a go it got that name. There was a family called Mortimer who live in the castle and they owned lands around here. One of them, maybe William, made a bargain with the monks that he would give them half his land if in return his family would be buried in the Abbey. In those days people thought the closer you were buried to the Alter of a Church, the more chance there was of going to heaven.
The bargain was made, the monks got the land and Sir William Mortimer died. He had kept his part of the bargain, but I’m afraid the monks were not so trustworthy. They didn’t like him very much so they ferried the lead coffin across to the island they dropped it overboard at the deepest point.
Today we think of those monks as wicked rascals, just as we do of anybody who breaks their bond or fails to keep their promise. None of us likes a person who is untrustworthy or who is not to be depended upon. You know the king of person who says they’ll turn up at 6 but doesn’t turn up ’till 7, or the kind of boy or girl who says “I’ll see that it gets done”, but never does anything about it.
It is a great thing to be trusted, do you have someone you can trust? We have Jesus, he never breaks his promise.