For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Jeremiah 29:11.
I copied this Bible verse into a draft post weeks ago, wondering -- not if it were true, but in what ways it could be true. Surely not as a blithe promise of prosperity or happy endings. I'm not averse to them. I've spent a lot of time thinking surely one was out there somewhere. But even a happy ending never exactly ties up all the loose ends. And a future with hope is not a destination, it's a moving target.
I've just celebrated my birthday. That and other things have sent me looking back through the eras of my life.
A friend recently sent me photos of the church my father served as teacher and organist from 1955 to 1958, when I was a very small child. In the years after we left, in a time of growth, the congregation built a new school and then a new church a few blocks away from these aging buildings.
What happens to the old churches when congregations move on? Sometimes the buildings are sold to new congregations. In gentrifying neighborhoods, perhaps, they're turned into restaurants or libraries or other public spaces. Lutheran elementary schools become preschools or after-school centers. Or, with no plans or resources for future use, buildings stand empty and decay.
My only real memory of that old church is of a Christmas service. It must have been the school children's Christmas Eve service, because I remember straining to see the pageant up in the chancel, to see Mary in her beautiful blue robe. I was only three and a half years old and my mother, my two younger sisters and I were sitting far back in church. A kind gentleman (as my mother would say) sitting near us allowed my sister Linda to stand on his lap so she could see better. (I think this is true.) But I had to stretch my head and shoulders high to see between all the heads in front of me, and I was disappointed.
At home, a two-story white house down the street and around the corner from church, I'm sure we'd been getting ready for Christmas. That would have been the year that Linda stepped on Baby Jesus and crushed him. We cried—but that's another story. On Christmas Eve we came back home from church and discovered that Santa had come to our house while we were gone. Daddy must have slid off the organ bench quickly after the final hymn and hurried home to get the presents out of their hiding places.
I picture all of this now as if it's a movie set in the 1950s -- the church-going version of "A Christmas Story," with little girls in Christmas dresses, church shoes and wool coats. The photo of that old church in Saginaw fits right into the production design.
But what of it? What now? What plans does the Lord have in store for this church, for Christ's church?
Eighteen months of pandemic have changed the pace of change everywhere. Children's progress in math and reading has slowed down, as measured on standardized tests. Other kinds of changes have accelerated, especially our society-wide awareness of disparities between rich and poor, white and black and brown. Church attendance, church affiliation -- these measures of religious behavior have been declining for years in many denominations.
And then there's the whole planet in the grip of climate change. heat waves, flooding and wild fires.
Hope is a moving target. God lives in the future.
Thank you to Jim Gladstone for the photos.
