I watched the Weather Channel periodically, tracking the path of Hurricane Laura. Then, after she hit, I was shocked at the devastation she wrought. It’s been almost twenty years since I lived in Lake Charles, LA, but I recognized some familiar places and the fury with which the hurricane attacked them.
A friend texted me a picture of First Baptist Church, Lake Charles, where I was once Pastor. Laura wasn’t kind to the building, pummeling its front entrance, knocking down stones, completely defacing the upper structure in front of the balcony, piling debris on the steps.
“Does this building look familiar?” my friend asked. Yes, it did, and in that familiarity, there was a sadness to what had happened.
The picture took me back to an earlier day, years ago, when I was standing on the church’s front steps, after the worship service, shaking hands with people, visiting, laughing, as they left on their way to a happy Sunday afternoon. Many of those people now face the nasty clean-up from the hurricane’s invasion of their homes and the consequences of property damage.
Peering a little closer into the photo, I could visualize the inside of the sanctuary: the days when people would start arriving early on Sunday mornings, bustling here and there, the orchestra rehearsing, the choir members vocalizing. As the worship time approached, my heart would beat a little faster.
I know a building is not the church. The church is the people in whom Jesus Christ dwells. But inside that physical building, memories run deep. That was where my son, David, Jr., was baptized and where my daughter Mary Elizabeth sang a solo in the children’s choir. It’s where people came forward to pray for my wife’s healing as she sat in a chair at the front. It’s where my friend, Rod Smith, too early gone from us, once came and led revival singing, where I prayed with people, where people came to know the Lord week after week, year after year. It’s where people were married, and people said good-bye to loved ones at funerals, where people hugged, and people cried.
A building is brick and mortar, but it is sacred for the memories it contains, and when it looks like that may change forever, or never quite be the same, a piece of the past goes with it.
But then, we are not beholden to the building, for the memories stay alive, like they have for me through these years, even though I’ve not stepped back into that physical structure. The past is still with us. As William Faulkner put it: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
What has happened in the past still affects us today.
But this moment is ours. Though our past weaves itself in and out of our lives, sometimes at inopportune times, we can make decisions now that will direct our paths, hopefully in the right direction. The quality of our choices today affects our memories of this day tomorrow, for good or bad. Our past can help us live this day in such a way that our past is more pleasant tomorrow.
But where do we go for direction?
A longtime member of the church in Lake Charles noticed one thing that stood intact. Almost unnoticed, there it was, above the debris that littered the front of the church.
It was a stone replica of the Bible, hovering above the rubble as it had been untouched.
“But the Bible stayed!” she exclaimed.
And so it did, and so it will, even when nothing physical is left in this corner of the universe, for as the Scripture says of itself, “Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.”
The hope the words in that book provides is a healing salve to those who are waiting for electricity, removing downed trees, rebuilding homes, and making a new past for tomorrow, today.
All we can do is the best we can, receiving each new day as a gift, a gift we can unwrap with gratitude for that day, each day a day God has made, a day to rejoice and be glad.