1 Corinthians 15:58
"Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters,
stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the
work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in
vain."
Reflection by Lillian Daniel
Long
before I was the pastor, on a winter Monday back in 1988, fire trucks
from neighboring towns came together to fight the blaze at my church,
struggling to keep the water in the hoses from freezing.
Church
members gathered to watch the sanctuary go up in flames. One woman in
her early twenties found herself weeping at the thought that she might
never get to walk down that aisle on her wedding day. Others wept as
they looked back and remembered beautiful moments of their lives that
had taken place in the worship services of that neo-Gothic building.
Thankfully,
no one was hurt, and the fire fighters saved the building, even though
the sanctuary interior was left gutted. The fire chief at the time told
me they counted that as a great victory, because once a fire starts in
an old church building, you can very easily lose the whole thing.
For
months afterwards, church members volunteered to plow through the
rubble and rebuild. Every spot that had been exposed to smoke had to be
washed down with rubber gloves and a special solution. Worshipping at a
church down the street, and then in the parish hall, they spent over a
year bringing back the building. They refused to give up, and they never
considered moving. In fact, a suggestion that this might be the time to
change the sanctuary color scheme from maroon to blue was roundly
defeated by a large congregational vote. They wanted it back exactly the
way it was.
But of course it would never be exactly the way it
was. Calamity shapes us and changes us; there is no avoiding that. But
how it shapes and changes us—that we have some control over. And I think
that rebuilding effort played a key role in shaping the character of my
congregation.
I wasn’t there to put on those rubber gloves, and
Lord knows I wasn’t there to vote on the color scheme. But I have been
shaped by the events that preceded me, humbled by the mighty cloud of
witnesses, from many churches, who pulled together in times of tragedy
and literally provided the roof over my head in each of my spiritual
homes.
Prayer
I give thanks for the courage
and sacrifice of people of faith throughout the generations, for
firefighters, rebuilders, workers and witnesses. Amen.
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