Corsewall Lighthouse, Scotland. Photo by Marilyn Turk

Last summer, my husband and I had the opportunity to check off something on our bucket list by traveling to the United Kingdom. One of the things we wanted to do was visit some lighthouses. One of the lighthouses we visited was the Corsewall Lighthouse in Scotland. This lighthouse was built in 1817 by the famous lighthouse engineer Robert Stevenson, who was the grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island. The 207-year-old lighthouse is now a hotel and restaurant, but we only stopped by to enjoy the fantastic vista overlooking the Irish Sea.

However, only months later in November of 2024, engineers working on repairs to the historic structure discovered a bottle hidden in the wall. Inside the bottle was a message, so the engineers called the Northern Lighthouse Board who oversees the Scottish lighthouses and were given permission to open the bottle and fish the letter out. What a surprise today’s engineers found when they realized the message had been written by other engineers! From 1892! What did it say? The message gave the names of the engineers and the lighthouse keepers and explained that they had worked on the lens the entire summer of 1892, then relit the lighthouse in September of that year. They were basically signing their work, just as an artist signs his. What an amazing connection from engineers 132 years ago to today’s engineers, who when they are finished with their work, will put their own message in the bottle and put it back where they found it.

As I thought about the historic message, I wondered what I would put in a bottle identifying myself if it were found a hundred years from now. Would it be wife, mother, grandmother? Or writer, lighthouse enthusiast, average tennis player? What is the work I have done that I would want others to know about in the future?

Actually, none of my accomplishments matter in the scheme of things. The most important thing I can claim is that “I am a child of God and a servant of Jesus Christ.”

What message would you leave in a bottle?

 

Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—John 1:12