This is the house with the dusty pulpit rooms that are full of old decrepit vacuum cleaners, a miscellaneous church bench, and a couple of dead forgotten house plants. This is the house with the stains on the pulpit, right where the preacher places his hands while he expostulates. This is the house with the tiny scraps of paper on the floor where the preschooler sat quietly in church, drawing strange animals or crooked houses with curly ink smoke coming out of their chimneys. She carefully ripped the page out of the notebook, folded the paper as neatly as she could, and printed her best friend's name while the tiny bits of paper fell to the floor. This is the house where there are animal cracker crumbs on the floor where the hungry toddler was hurriedly shushed. This is the house where the youths' benches are conspicuously clean, unspeaking of the text messages surreptitiously sent and received during worship. This is the house where the older people receive God's Word and contemplate on what has been, and what is being now, and is likely to be. This is the house where the busy mother of schoolchildren and teenagers hungrily soaks up comfort and strength from the Word and the hymns because she doesn't have the time during the week to soak it up like she wishes she could. Nobody who comes here is perfect. Some are not in good health. Some are in mourning. Some are complacent. Some are overwhelmed. Some are proud; some are down beaten. But every one of them needs Jesus.
Few of the singers or speakers who sing or speak in this house are formally trained. But all can worship.
There is no specific conclusion to my thoughts on this particular house of God. These are just thoughts that were rolling around in my head while I was vacuuming the carpet in the auditorium last weekend. Cleaning an empty sanctuary feels a little bit like walking through someone's home while they're gone. You sense their presence and absence all at once and it's just an odd feeling.
May God bless and guide all who worship here.
That is sooo like my thought patterns when I clean that auditorium. I end up praying for half the church as I push and pull that vacuum through its paces.
ReplyDeleteYes, this is so well said. I know exactly what you mean April. When we finally started to have church in a real chapel with benches and a pulpit again I thought of how much I had missed it. Somehow rows of chairs in a improvised chapel is not the same thing. Vacuuming and praying or just standing at the back of an empty sunlit chapel are experiences that I would remember and savor for always even if it was taken from me.
ReplyDeleteWow. So good!
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