The Abraham Stone in Lundie Kirkyard

A bright, sunny day.

This morning at Church Eleanor led the Service and I preached. It is good to work together in this way and it seemed to be appreciated.

Afterwards, inspired by a Facebook friend Jag who runs a site called Strange Places in Scotland (SPIS) we went out to Lundie Kirkyard, north of Dundee, to look for the Abraham Stone. This is a unique 18th Century headstone which carries the story from Genesis Chapter 22, which is about Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his only son Isaac. Hopefully you can see in the carving, Abraham raising a knife above his son's body lying on the altar. The inscription round the top edge carries the words:

''And Abraham stretched forth his hand, took the knife to slay his only son. He looked and behold behind him a ram was caught in a thicket".

The headstone was erected by Donald Ritchie in memory of John Ritchie. On the reverse of the headstone there is a carving of the story in Genesis 3 of Eve being tempted by the serpent. The inscription reads:

"The serpent beguiled me and I did eat"

From there we we went to have Dinner in a nearby Restaurant, the Pear Tree, which served a magnificent High Tea, with 'half portions' of the main course. The Chef joked that he sometimes 'gets carried away' when serving half portions. We will go back!

If you would like to see a photo of the reverse side of the headstone, see the extra photo.
Note - Apologies if you can't see it on your device but Flikr uploader was being very, very bad and was broken.