The Baker’s Son Too
The major theme in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress is the cost of salvation. As Christian’s journey proves, the road to Heaven is not easy, the cost is great and the true Christian must be willing to pay the cost no matter what. Man is full of sin, but this does not keep him from attaining glory.
My Dad, Gordon David Robertson, died this year and like his father he was a Master Baker’s Son. At 18, Gordon enlisted as a student at Edinburgh University. Always an academic with excellent school results, especially Mathematics and German for which he won awards. Gordon, a handsome chap of course, (it runs in the family!), was bound for a career in teaching and followed that path through University which led him into teaching Mathematics. Even after retiring Dad continued to love Mathematics, gaining more degrees and also prizes for Newspaper Crosswords, for which he ‘Got the Tee Shirt’ on numerous occasions!
Just as my Dad benefitted from his father’s German, learnt in a POW Camp, (see last month’s article), so all of Gordon’s children and several of his grandchildren benefitted from his skill with Mathematics, patiently explaining the complexities of Algebra and Trigonometry, which probably exasperated him, but he never let on. Granddad James was a hero in WW1, but my Dad achieved this status in peacetime, not just because of his Mathematics, which was enough on its own, but because he encouraged us.
I remember at eighteen, Rolls-Royce turned me down for an Engineering Scholarship. On hearing the news Dad’s response was “I was too good for them anyway!” That is the sort of encouragement and support you need as a late teenager when the world seems daunting.
Moses instructed his successor Joshua; “But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children.” Deuteronomy 4 v 9.
Both my Granddad and my Dad passed onto their children things they had learned and more importantly they shared their faith.
