I just completed a Shutterfly book compiling more than 200 photos from my time as a hospice chaplain. I drove several hundred miles each week to visit my patients. Some lived in facilities and others in their homes. A stubborn few lived alone, even though they needed daily assistance. Grown children put their lives on hold to care for their elderly parents. It was my privilege to offer spiritual support in the last chapter of their lives. The non-sense of the Gospel is that They. Blessed. Me. The unexpected gift for me was discovering the peacefulness of back roads and small towns. I found myself stopping to take pictures out of my car window, often posting them for an appreciative audience. Many of you voiced a shared appreciation for these echoes from the past.
I find it difficult to put into words why these old structures spoke to me. Somehow the traces of earlier generations and the historic pieces of their silent stories offered me an encounter with their past. The rear view image seems simpler. Even as I write that, I am aware that their lives were not easy. Indoor plumbing and ease of transportation were not standard elements to daily life. Hospitals with skilled physicians were not even a dream. Countless luxuries that we take for granted did not exist. Yet, I was taken by the shells of homes now abandoned and awed by the grandeur of barns, some still serving a purpose.
Rural towns had churches. On the Sabbath, families broke bread with their neighbors through the mystery of communion and on picnic blankets after the service concluded. Joys and concerns voiced in the prayers of the church were carried home in hearts and minds. Many sacred buildings were added onto over the decades to accommodate a growing population. Some still house a church family, meeting weekly with a handful of the faithful. Some sanctuaries have been reclaimed to serve new purposes in their communities. Sadly, some of these sacred spaces sit idle, the doors nailed shut with only distant memories of families streaming through their doors.
This one church in Castleton Township won over my heart more than the many others I admired. She stands alone, surrounded by nothing but fields. She offered a haven from the storms of daily life to generations of farm families who walked or rode in wagons to find weekly solace in her sanctuary. The design details, carefully imagined and constructed, continue to captivate, even if weathered. A white globe light can be seen hanging in the entryway, no longer powered to illuminate the way.
I imagine babies from these ancestors being baptized into the Christian faith, water splashed that anchored them for all their days. I picture those doors, now silent, bursting open with a newlywed couple, holding hands and smiling radiantly at the expectation of a rosy future. The rope was pulled and a bell joyously announced that two lives were now one, bound by the Spirit. I imagine the solemnity of a coffin being carried out in the strong arms of loved ones to an awaiting wagon or hearse. A gathering of disciples interred these saints in the adjoining cemetery with spadefuls of dirt and prayer.
Though her time of service is past, this church’s very presence, dignified and lovely, reminds me of the enduring power of God‘s Word. I hold firm a conviction that these churches gave their people hope. Though seemingly as fragile as a thread unraveling at the hem of my sweater, their shared hope keeps me upright. I am so grateful that they passed the baton forward.
Preaching Life 