Gentle Reader,
Do not remember the former things
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.– Isaiah 43:18-19 (NRSV)
When I opened the door to the church building last Thursday, our office administrator (who in fact runs the whole thing, never kid yourself about that) met me, her eyes wide and all the color drained from her face.
“You won’t believe what happened.”
I felt what little bit of pink my own pale face has flee. I thought maybe someone had died unexpectedly, tragically.
One of our retired members waved me in. It was odd for him to be there at that time. He opened an inner door that connects the office space to the foyer and gestured with the rag in his hand. I looked down the short hallway. My jaw dropped of its own volition.
Puddles of standing water. Furniture dripping.
He went down the hallway. I cautiously followed. Our facilities manager and several others were hard at work, but the mess before me would require treatment from professional hands.
I love our building. Trust me, I know that the Church is not the building or the programs. The Church is the people of God, united in Christ, led by the Holy Spirit. The Church transcends time, space, culture. But I love our building. It was lovingly built by the congregation twenty years ago. It’s spacious. Bright but soothing. Kept meticulously clean by our facilities crew. We’ve been working so hard to pay off the mortgage. We do our best to utilize the building as an outreach tool – open gym time for basketball, pickleball tournaments, vacation Bible school, space for organizing little Christmas gifts for our distance members. (They hate being called shut-ins).
The carpet squelched under my boots. A main pipe burst or gave way to a significant leak (I am not sure of the correct terminology) early that morning. So early that nobody was in the building, and thank God for that. Pieces of ceiling sagged. All of the missions materials on one of the tables was destroyed. Drips, like the ones coming off the edge of the roof after a rainstorm, plinked and plunked onto the sodden floor.
The foyer will have to be completely redone. Some water found a path through the sanctuary doors and made its way up the middle aisle, but thankfully that’s the extent of the damage and we’re working on making sure it’s dried out. The heat throughout the building is impacted, not functioning at its full capacity. The bathrooms closest to the office are unusable. Another trail of water seeped into the little library space so tenderly cared for by two retired educators, but thankfully no books were harmed.
The Church is not a building. But I shed some tears. I thought of the people who have spent most or all of their lives as part of this congregation. We have quite a few. Their history, their stories, are etched, though invisibly, in every nook and cranny. I thought of the people who are new to us (though not new to God), and how they consistently talk about how nice it is to be met by a kind face and word as they come into the foyer. I thought of the prayers murmured in quiet corners. I thought of my own self, how I have grown and changed as I have become part of this people, in this building.
All the former things.
Then I got moving. Took all the soaked and smeared papers and pamphlets off of tables and threw them away. Started sending out messages to people who needed to know immediately. Gratefully collaborated with our office administrator and youth pastor in crafting a mass communication. Paused to pray with our facilities manager, who will bear the greatest weight in sorting out plumbers and contractors and repairs. I did nothing that I planned to do that day, but I did everything I needed to do.
The Hebrew word for remember here is זָכַר, zâkar. It means exactly that – remember. But interestingly, it can also mean “make a memorial.” God knows us better than we know ourselves. We are not prone to forgetting significant events. So I wonder today if the Spirit is prompting us to not make an inner memorial to the former things. To not dwell on or in them. To not spend the rest of our lives weeping and wailing over what can’t be changed. To not stay stuck in the former things.
The Church is not a building. We’ll come together and, with the blessing of God’s wisdom, we’ll figure out how to fix what needs fixing. Because that’s what you have to do. There is a history in this place and people, but there is also a future. God is neither surprised nor shaken by an indoor flood. God will not stop working. God will not stop drawing people into relationship with God by grace, kindness, and truth.
Today I think that God invites us to mourn forward. We don’t have to pretend that thing didn’t happen. We don’t have to shame ourselves into not crying. We don’t have to look at grief in racing terms. We just have to keep moving forward. One day it’ll be a centimeter, the next a football field. Progress is progress. And we make progress because God is with us. The thing doesn’t define or ground us. God does.
That gives me such hope.
GRACE AND PEACE ALONG THE WAY,
MARIE
Image Courtesy of Jack B