You Are There

Meditation on Psalm 139 and John 14, selected verses

In memory of Margaret Murray Cowie

January 22, 1921 – January 17, 2026

Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Jan. 20, 2026

Margaret Murray was born on Jan. 22, 1921! Many people, upon meeting her, were surprised to learn her age. I guess you could say that she didn’t look nearly 105 years old. Then again, we don’t often meet people who have lived that long to know what one usually looks like when one lives beyond a century.

She was strong. She was smart. She was curious and caring, always wanting to hear the latest news from the church, sending many cards and letters to remember birthdays and anniversaries and cheer someone who was sick or grieving.

She was funny. She knew how to make people laugh, wherever she was. And you would know the moment she started to speak that she wasn’t from around here, though she had lived on Long Island for more than 60 years.

She was warm and welcoming. She loved people—her family most of all—and loved to get phone calls and receive visitors—from a dining room chair, covered with a blanket and wearing gloves in winter and on the front porch in summer, where she could see the birds on the feeder and the cars with dogs coming to the kennel that her family owned and operated since 1939.

She loved animals, especially dogs, especially golden retrievers, but some stray cats wormed their way into her heart. A white cat showed up once, eating bird seed on her patio. She started feeding it cat food outside, saying they would find another home for it. Then she started letting it in when it got cold. Then she named it “Twinkie,” because it was the color of the cream filling of Hostess Twinkies. She was never going to find it another home.

She learned to love American country music. The radio played 1050 Country all day long. She fell in love with Engelbert Humperdink and Tom Jones and continued to enjoy her Scottish records—the Alexander Brothers and Andy Stewart. Oh, and she did what many women in America did in the 1960s and 70s. She watched soap operas, such as The Edge of Night, whenever she ironed.

 She was poised and beautiful, with lovely hazel eyes and fair skin. Whenever I visited her at her home, even with 5 or 10 minutes notice after I finished at church, she was carefully dressed, soft colors complimenting her complexion, highlighting her femininity, accessorized by rings and pins or brooches. Her hair was always neatly styled—wavy with the help of curlers, worn at night, and red with the help of Clairol. She said that she was a redhead when she came into this world, and she would be a redhead when she left it.

She was grateful, as there were some lonely days, for those who remembered her and sent a card or visited. Most of all, she was grateful for the care of her children, especially Sheila who lived with her, and made sure that she was always safe, well fed with three meals and tea and biscuits at 10, 3, and 7. She was never left alone.

Margaret was born to Catherine and William, a fisherman, in Helmsdale, a village on the east coast of the Sutherland area of Scotland. Helmsdale is a fishing port and was once the home of one of the largest herring fleets in Europe.

She was the second of six children—one older named Jeannie and four younger: Jessie, William, George, and James. She was a good student and was recognized with a certificate and prize for cooking from Helmsdale Higher Grade Public School for the school year 1933-34. The prize was the book, Great Expectations.

Her service in the British military in World War II, beginning when she was 19, was the thing that she was most proud of. She kept a picture of herself in uniform from that time with a friend, who served with her, near her favorite chair. I just found out that she was featured in a 2015 book called, Women Warriors of World War II: Told Through the Voices of the Women of Scotland. This is what she said in her interview in 2011:

Well, in 1940, I joined the NAAFI. That’s the Navy, Army, Air Force Institute and I worked in the canteen in the aerodrome in Wick for a year, then to Castletown for another year. Then there was the conscription and the women had to join the service. In 1942, I was 21 years old and I went to Inverness to register. Two weeks after that, I was called up. I did my training in the Cameron Barracks in Inverness, then to South England for more training then to Whitby in Yorkshire. I was in the Ack Ack or Anti-Aircraft unit, and I served until they asked for volunteers to go overseas. I volunteered because they wanted the women to take over the men’s jobs so they could go to the frontline. I was attached to the Military Police in France, and I was there for a while and as the war progressed, into Germany, then into Belgium where I stayed until the end of the war.

It was an interesting experience but it really was a good life! It was a good life. There was 6 in our family. I went into the Army, my two sisters went into munitions. Of my three brothers—two went into the Navy, and one went into the Army. We all got home Scot free![1]

Margaret met Hamish Cowie after the war, when she was working in housekeeping at a hotel with his sister, Sheila, who introduced them. He was good looking, a police officer, but it wasn’t love at first sight.

They were married on Nov. 24, 1948, in Margaret’s church in Helmsdale. The couple lived in Tain and Fearn while Hamish worked as a policeman. They had a son, John, then two daughters, Kathleen, and Sheila after a long gap, before the family emigrated to America on July 5, 1959.

Hamish’s uncle had been living in Commack for about 20 years; he was breeding golden retrievers and had a small dog kennel named Fonab after a castle in the Highlands where Hamish’s father worked as a gamekeeper. The uncle’s grandchildren weren’t interested in taking over the kennel; it was an opportunity for a new life for Hamish, Margaret, and the children.

But life in America was very different than the family was used to. Margaret was terribly homesick. Bringing up three children in a country she didn’t know was almost too much for her in the beginning. Margaret said that if it hadn’t been for the Scottish immigrants on Long Island that they met through the Daughters of Scotia, Margaret said she would have been on the first boat out of here.

The Lyndsay Lodge became like family to her. They shared memories and common struggles and kept alive the stories, history, music, and traditions of the old country. Margaret and Hamish enjoyed the Highland Games, Scottish Country Dancing and the annual Burns Supper, along with other meetings, rites, and socials. Margaret was selected for the highest position of service, the Grand Chief Daughter, traveling to bring greetings and help connect all the lodges around the country.

Margaret and her husband, Hamish, also gained a church home and faith family when they started attending the First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown in the 1960s. They quickly made friends. They were founding members of the Highlanders, which organized the Burns Supper each year, among other Scottish heritage events and activities.

Our reading in Psalm 139 is assurance that there is nowhere we could go in this world where God is not already there.  This is assurance for those whose lives take them to unexpected places, that don’t always feel like home. Have you ever been somewhere unexpected? We cannot go anywhere that the Lord God isn’t already there. The Lord God is himself our strength and refuge.

 When I read this passage, particularly beginning at verse 7, I think of Margaret, Hamish, and their children’s long journey from Scotland and their new life here, which felt so different than the home of their birth.

⁷ Where can I go from your spirit?
    Or where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
    if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
⁹ If I take the wings of the morning
    and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me fast.

Jesus, in our gospel reading in John, assures us that we all have a place, a forever home, in his Father’s house of many rooms. With his death and resurrection, he has prepared a place for all who believe and seek to know and follow him. We have the promise that he will come again and take us to himself, so that where he is, we will also be. The apostle Paul will tell us in his letter to the Romans that nothing can separate us from the love of God revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Sometimes, people would ask Margaret what her secret was for living a long life. She would just smile and shrug. I know she didn’t worry about cholesterol or calories. She ate meat and potatoes and soup. She was a great baker of sweets as Hamish loved his desserts: shortbread and “millionaire shortbread” topped with layers of caramel and chocolate; currant slices; and one-layer cakes, filled with cream and raspberry jam and dusted with powdered sugar; she made tapioca pudding and rice pudding, too. She stayed active for most of her life, waiting on customers in the kennel until she and Hamish retired, cooking and cleaning the house, and exercising on a treadmill she kept under her chair. Interestingly, she never learned to drive—so maybe that was one less stress in her life. Oh, and she read her horoscope every day. She brought a clipping of one to church when she was 102 and it promised that she would live to be 103. Well, what do the horoscope writers know, anyway?

Margaret and I had a moving experience when she was in the ICU last month. For the first 20 minutes or so of the visit, she was asleep. I couldn’t bear to wake her, so I just sat quietly and had my own private conversation with the Lord. When she awoke and saw me, I rejoiced in her look of recognition in what can be a very disorienting place, with IVs and catheters, 24-hour lights and the beeping of machines. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. She made a funny face, as if she were saying, “It’s you, again!” We laughed. Then, she looked out the window at the whiteness and remembered her faraway home of her birth. Snow had fallen and a morning fog hid the sun.

“Look at the mist!” she said, her face brightening. For a moment, she was back in her Scotland home. It was a gift from the Lord.

The promise of Christ’s presence is not just something for the future—for someday, after we die. The Lord is with us now revealing Christ’s love and helping us in so many secret ways. Christ has sent his Advocate, his Holy Spirit, to dwell with us, and teach us everything that he wanted us to know and lead us to be peacemakers, reconcilers, and healers in this broken world.

The Holy Spirit is our comfort and strength when we lose a loved one and can’t imagine a future without her. And the Body of Christ—gathered in this room and beyond, in every place and time—is the hands, feet, and heart of Christ, helping each other carry the burden of grief and find hope and purpose in the Lord every day.

Dear friends, wherever there is the Spirit, we are home. As the psalmist and the apostle assure us, there’s nowhere we go in this world and the next, where the Spirit of God and the love of our Savior is not.

Listen to Christ’s powerful words for all time once more and remember that you are not alone. And that we have all what we need each day to carry on.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

Amen.

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[1] Jeanette B. Reid, Ph.D, Women Warriors of World War II: Told Through the Voices of the Women of Scotland (NY: Page Publishing, 2015) 28-29.