Time and again

Returning to the church of my childhood is a step into history with an ellipsis. The building stands on the same site and from the outside, looks the same. But a fire some time ago gutted the inside, and what is now there is similar, but oh so different from the past.

I reach to open doors and realize when the door is opened, that my mind has expected one scene, and another is in front of me. There are walls where none existed before and open space where there were walls. In my mind’s eye, when I am far away, it all blurs together, but today, walking into the building, the present blends into the past.

The auditorium is the most deceptive. After the fire the congregation chose to rebuild the church to replicate the original, but with subtle modernity. The platform is far larger, the organ gone. The pews have padding and are neatly tapered on the aisles so as not to catch your sleeves when you sit down. There are handicap insets halfway down for wheelchairs. One side of windows has become a smooth wall as a notch between an old and new building was finally blended into a hall. Curiously, the communion table is identical to the original, though it must be new.

The people also jolt me. The few who are the same are not at all the same. That older man handing out bulletins should be a young father, not a fragile grandfather. The family at the front seem to have a teenager where I am expecting a little child. The young father across the room, his wavy hair pulled back from his face, flashes back an image of a curly headed toddler in the nursery.

Down the row is a mother of college and high school students. Where is the bright eyed little girl who sang in my children’s choir? Behind me is a tall balding man, grey at the temples, who – ah yes, I remember, and beside him, I catch a glint in his wife’s eyes that rolls the age off both of them. In my mind, we step back decades to carve a camp out of a woods, setting up tents in an October downpour.

The music is totally different, yet familiar. The people are largely new, but local to the neighborhood. Here and there I see the next generation, or even the third generation of old member.

What is dramatically the same is the message. Truth, plain and simple, preached with love and compassion, straight from scripture.

So much is changed, and yet not at all. People age, buildings change and morph in to new usage, music and preaching style move with culture . In contrast, the message of scripture remains the same.

Only the person who listens changes.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!