Alternative Ulster on the twelfth

Where can you get this living water? (Jo4:11). All we had to offer was 900 bottles of still water to quench the thirst of a small percentage of the crowds who had gathered to see an army following a king who died, was buried and went to meet his maker 300 years ago. We however marched to a different beat, the beat of the drum of the Maker of Heaven and of Earth, Jesus Christ the Lord.
At about 945am on the 12th July our lorry pulled onto the route that has traditionally been taken by hundreds of Orangemen and bandsmen. The lorry carried a cross and where it once carried fruit and vegetables was a band lead by Paul and Beulah Shields. The praises of our God and King rang out across Belfast. The lorry was surrounded by a Gideon’s army of volunteers waving flags, singing, and especially blessing the crowds of onlookers with bottles of water and UCB’s Word For Today daily devotionals.
Our banners draped along the sides of the lorry read “Jesus is Lord His banner over me is love.” What more could we say? The crowds had to read it for themselves and we pray that they were caused to wonder. Our prayer would be in the words of Ps40:3
“He has given me a new song to sing,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see what he has done and be astounded.
They will put their trust in the Lord.”
There was also a sense that we were reclaiming ground, we were walking a route traditionally taken by orange men, but as walked we were laying down a carpet of praise instead of one of intransigence and hate. We felt we were experiencing reclamation; especially when we reached the field; for there, there was a sense too that nature and the right way of things had already reclaimed the field and a herd of cows was grazing (we had gone to the original orange field and not the one at Barnet’s Park). We carried the cross in and prayed and sang at the crumbling bandstand. It seemed that the orange order had already relinquished ground; their route has shortened; we were there and they were not.
The cross had won the field.