How to Recover a Lost Art in 2020

Dear Reader,

A  brown cardboard storage box contains cards, letters, and notes I've received for the past 50 years.

Their messages were kind, or they came from special people. They struck a cord with me for a variety of reasons, and I've never had the heart to get rid of them ... for the past 50 years. The box can no longer contain its bounty!

The recent influx of papers and letters from my  Dad's life combined with mine to fill a good portion of a closet. Time to glean a few and toss the rest.

The result: I've spent hours reading and lost in memories. My grandmother's rounded, neat cursive, wishing me well. Dad's strong, bold handwriting with something humorous to share. Friends, some long gone, remembered by their writing even before I read the name.  Cards from my boys when printing their names was a laudable feat. Every handful or so, there would be one from my mother, a prolific letter writer. Her familiar severe right slant and unclear letters had me rereading and decipthering as her handwriting always did - letters to me at college, in China, from her new home in South Carolina.

I pictured those many hands I loved as they wrote with their arthritis or age spots or broken nails, and I heard their voices come to life on the page.

Finally, I landed on a thank you note from my mother in 1999. A thank you note from my mother! Whatever would the woman who gave me breath and met my needs for the first quarter of my life have to thank me for? But she did ... and I've framed the card, her love, and her unforgettable handwriting.

Today, I answered some email and sent a few texts, but there wasn't  one memorable piece of handwriting among them. No cursive to reflect personhood, nothing worth framing, no picturesque reminders of a hand or a life. Just Times New Roman 12 in featureless black and white.

Perhaps this implies enough about teaching our children cursive in elementary school. Like so many other things, memorable is being sacrificed on the altar of quick, fast, and modern.

For over 30 years my career involved teaching teens grammatical rules and proper writing style. Now, I am flabbergasted when I realize my texts are dashed off with incomplete sentences, without end marks, minus capitals and punctuation. Whatever happened to the Mrs. Walczak of eighth grade English class? Several generations of teenagers must be equally flummoxed about the years they spent learning English grammar that have been blown to the icloud in social media.

Here's a challenge for 2020: let's return to the art of letter and note writing ... even if only once a week. How do we recover this lost art? Simply, do it. Pick a recipient who could use a bit of joy and scratch away. I realize it will cost a postage stamp and a bit of time, but consider it memory making for someone, carving kind words into forever.  A day is brightened, encouragement shared, when the mailbox produces an envelope with your handwriting. The message doesn't have to be so meaningful that it is saved for 50 years, but it can exude friendship and love, poignant enough to frame with your fingerprints and style embossed across its face.

No simpler, less intimidating, more inspiring way to lift someone up.

But the most life-changing letters I've ever received are compiled as epistles from the likes of the Apostles Paul, Peter, James, and John whose goal was to communicate the Word of God. Originally recorded on parchment or sheep skin, they stand witness for eternity to God's everlasting love, and each bears the very handprint of God.

That box of letters I've kept for 50 years? Most of them are still in the box and back in the closet. Who would have the heart to dispose of such memories and kindness? Not me.

Continuing to pen in cursive and
 challenging you to enrich your connectedness ...
 with a letter.

Love,

Your Friend on Layton.  

10 Ways to Make 2020 Matter

The years fly off the calendar any more. Wasn't it just 2017? 

And as the years disappear, so have many people in our lives. 2019 left a hole in our family.

Perhaps it's my perception of the relentless march of time or perhaps it's the loss of people important  to us, but the need to make every year matter seems increasingly necessary.

Maybe I'm just getting old.

But as I look down the next 365 days, I'd like every one to matter. Who knows? Perhaps this year will only have 263. How can we live every day to its maximum potential? Here are some thoughts to consider to make 2020 a year that matters ... 

• Step out of your comfort zone. My living room is my comfort zone. So I need to get off the couch and get out. Do something for the world that requires some courage, some initiative, and a little thinking outside the box. Volunteer to build houses with Habitat for Humanity in West Virginia or teach in a school in Central America or help in a soup kitchen in Scranton. Think out of your neighborhood, out of your socio-cultural milieu, out of the country. Live sacrificially.
• Give ... to the local homeless shelter or food bank, to your church, to a needy single mom.
  
  Give coats, gloves, hats, toiletries, and bedding to organizations like the Women's Resource Center or the Catherine McAuley Center. Give to worthwhile children and teen programs, like CareNet and Youth for Christ. Give your time and energy  to fix a broken door knob for a single woman or babysit for a mother of toddlers or take an older person to the doctor and out to lunch. Selflessness is the key.
• Begin a new friendship with an elderly person in a nursing home or a shut-in on your street, with a foreign university student who needs help with his English or an immigrant mom who is having trouble buying groceries in her new culture, with the children of a single mom, with the new family in the neighborhood.
• Cultivate old friendships. Facebook your college roommate, whom you haven't
  
  seen in 4 decades, and plan a get-together. Skype your cousin in Scotland. Email your high school chums for a lunch date. Seek one-on-one time with your old friends. Maybe meet every week with that one soul sister whose encouragment never fails.
• Use your creativity. Build furniture, write a book,  knit for veterans in the local veterans' hospital, paint your bedroom or a picture, sew a quilt, fix the car, make jewelry, bake. Use your creativity to brighten someone's day.
• Read. A lot. Magazines, newspapers, biographies, novels. Keep challenging your mind
  with information. Join a book club where you can discuss ideas.
• Walk ... in places that draw your heart to reflection and awe and fire your brain with the
  
  grandeur of the Creator God. Walk the beach, walk the woods, walk at the lake. Walk at Lackawanna State Park. The park has 80 miles of trails. My grandson and I have made it our goal to walk all of them together. We've been doing it for 3 years and marking our completed trails on the park map. This year, we'll keep walking. Look up on your trek to the beauty around you.
• Plan family events. Big ones, like Olympic games in the backyard, with the
  
  kids, grandkids, cousins, aunts, and uncles. Include  a campfire and a karaoke competition. Or a camping trip, a day at Knobel's, a raft trip on the Delaware. Do some creative planning so no one will forget that family time. Or small family times, like a movie, a board game, a special themed dinner. Make memories this year with the ones you love.
• Invest in the children of your family. Get down on your knees with those kids or grandkids and play Hot Wheels or baby dolls or pony ranch or whatever they want for an hour - without leaving the room or going for coffee. 
• Get to know God. If you haven't been to church in 50 years, go ... time's running out.
  
  If you have deep soul questions that have never been answered about God, let me know ... I can hook you up with someone who can help. If you've accepted Jesus as your Savior Redeemer, walk more deeply into relationship with Him. If you know Him, heaven is your final destination. Make getting to know God the ultimate goal of your year ... after all, this year may only contain 169 days.

And in everything, give thanks. Grateful living changes attitude and perspective.

Looking to make 2020 a year that matters ...

On Layton.

How about a nap in a pig barn?

Betsy and Beulah, Wyatt's pigs, 2019

The pig barn at the Harford Fair exudes comfort.

At least it does if you've spent four hours walking the fairgrounds. Move over, Betsy and Beulah. Make way for my weary piggies.

Wyatt, Harford Fair, 2019

My grandsons, Wyatt and Mack, have been raising pigs and/or goats for about five years, so I make annual pilgrimages to the fair's pig barn to enjoy the fun of the show.

Pig barn living at the fair is not what I expected. My vision of pig barns is based solely on Charlotte's Web where sweet Charlotte goes to extreme lengths in her webs to keep her friend Wilbur from getting to the fair. Her attempts to derail Wilbur's trip to the fair certainly weren't because of the accommodations.

Sadee at the goat show, 2018

The 4-H children at the fair who maintain the stalls and their animals do an immaculate job. The floors are thick with fresh hay, shoveled out regularly. The bovines recline like hairy mountains, oblivious of the crowds about them, swishing their tails to ward off flies like fat dowagers on a Carolina veranda while emitting ear-splitting squeals if they happen to cross each other's personal space. The pens are even decorated with posters for the competition, bearing the name of the owner, the farm, the pigs' names, and the multi-colored ribbons indicating their prize position. Feng shui even in the pig pen. We congregate around the Gadsden Ridge Farm stall. It's family.

But the real fun is in the ring. The actual show is more interesting than most television sit-coms. The pigs have been hosed down and shined up for their appearance before the judges, and the kids, likewise, wear their best jeans, often a plaid shirt, and sometimes a pair of boots that cost more than a Weber grill.

And bling is the thing ... even in the pig barn. Many of the competitors, kids not pigs, wear wide Western belts embedded with turquoise, crystals, and colorful gems. Some wear flashy necklaces, drawing more attention to the showman than the pig, a good ploy if they have trouble controlling their wayward charges.

The plan is to walk your pig in a circle or a figure eight using a guide whip to gently tap the pig while simultaneously keeping your eyes on the judge with a smile on your face. Something like patting your head and rubbing your tummy ... not so easy. The judge floats around the ring with a clipboard giving points to the showman for poise, posture, control, and personality and to the pig for shoulder width, leg distance, back length, and butt configuration. Muscle vs. fat becomes an issue to which both the hogs and I can relate.

With strength and determination of their own, those pigs become a heavyweight challenge for the strongest-willed teenager. One pig heads for the exit shoot, another refuses to move, one skirts the edge declining to come out in the middle, another wants to run at break-neck speed ... anywhere but here. It's a comedy of errors, and glory goes to the kid who can hold the judge's eye, direct his/her pig, demonstrate control, and keep on smiling.

Considering the comfortable pens, the showy affair, and the bling, the Prodigal Son might never have returned home. His story, like the pigs, might have had a tragic ending.

But most of the hogs who enter the ring through those narrow gates are headed to the auction block by the end of the week to provide hundreds of pounds of chops, ribs, roasts, and bacon. And this would be the reason Charlotte sacrificed her life to save her friend Wilbur.

The pig analogy could also apply to us. Everything that looks good, feels comfortable, and shows well may not be the best thing for us.

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it, but small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it." 

Matthew 7:13-14

A sacrifice has been made for us as well. We don't have to be led by the trainer's whip. Unlike the pigs, we can make the choice to follow The Way, God's Way, and avoid destruction. 

The last thing we want to do is fall into lethargy and take a nap in the pig sty when the end looms.

Promises, Promises

"We promise a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage," Presidential campaign 1928.

"Mrs. Walczak, I promise to do all of my homework this quarter," A well-intentioned student.

"I can't promise I'll try, but I'll try to try," Bart Simpson.

Promises, promises.

Promises are only as good as the Promise Maker.

This weekend our family celebrated promises made and promises kept. 

The scene was Charleston, South Carolina, where the War Between the States began, and the North launched a campaign, promising freedom to African American slaves. Promise kept.

I think I would concur with the Marquis de Lafayette, "Charleston is one of the best built, handsomest, and most agreeable cities I have ever seen." A great place for exchanging wedding promises.

Michael and Shayna, July 21, 2019

Our entire clan gathered in Charleston to witness the exchanging of promises between my sister's daughter, Shayna, and her fiance, Michael. The four day action-packed destination wedding included a cruise of Charleston Harbor, yoga on the waterfront, golf, plantation tours, horse and buggy carriage rides, seafood dinners, time at Folly Beach, and a city-wide scavenger hunt when we searched out things like joggling boards and other wedding parties. (I did it all with the six grandkids, and I'm still recovering!)

Charleston ranks second to Las Vegas as destination wedding capital of the US. Who knew? Our hotel, the Belmond, and the city certainly know how to welcome brides, grooms, and their families.

The whirlwind ended on Sunday evening at the Rice Mill. We took our seats on the lenai in the southern heat beside a salt water marsh and oohed and aahed over our red-haired beauty, dressed in lace. The bridesmaid brunch, the late night parties, the packing and moving the family over 700 miles, everything built to a crescendo that night ... the exchanging of promises.

You've been to enough weddings. You know the promises:

 I promise to cherish and keep you ... 

•  when things are great for us and even when the kids are a handful, the house is falling apart, or I lose my job. 
• when we have a comfortable bank account, and we can pay our bills, and when we have nothing but the roof over our heads and a beat-up car. 
•  if you are healthy or if you break your leg or have cancer, and I must care for you daily.
•  when I don't like you sometimes because you have a few annoying habits. 
• as my dearest relationship on earth until we are parted by death. 
• And this is my solemn promise.

Last weekend Shayna and Michael made those promises to each other although not in quite those words. We all witnessed it. Promises are only as good as the Promise Makers, and Shay and Mike have the right stuff for promise keeping: strong moral fiber, impeccable character, and commitment to each other's well-being. They will work hard to keep their promises, no matter what life brings their way. So their journey begins.

But as an observer of the wedding guests, my joy didn't settle only on the two Promise Makers in front of the audience. Among the sons, sisters, brothers, and cousins in attendance, I saw a bevy of strong marriages, all cultivated by commitment to promises. Several couples had faced cancer and heart attacks. Some battled job and financial issues. Many either had run the gauntlet of parenthood or were deep in it. Some had second chances. Among the older guests were years of faithfulness. There was wedding happiness for the newlyweds, but abundant joy for those who had proven it could be done through the tests and trials of life. Promises can be kept.

The tone of the wedding? HOPEFUL.

Our "Me" culture leaves little room for keeping promises if those promises run counter to personal satisfaction and self-concern. Questions of integrity and character are moot in the face of "Do what makes you happy," despite the consequences to those around us, despite the promises we've made. The Almighty "I" becomes the key to decision-making. 

A key question facing individuals today is, "Are we willing to keep our promises?"

Our Charleston wedding, filled with promise keepers, was refreshing, hopeful. The future of our society is planted in the bedrock of such commitment and cultivated by mutual respect and integrity. It's a relationship choice that will make or break our characters, our families, our world.

Thankfully, we've been set a powerful example in our Promise-Keeping God who is faithful. He makes us a plethora of promises and always does what He says. Walking life with Him exudes confidence and strength because we know the One who has our backs will never turn His back on us.

"The Lord is trustworthy in all He promises and faithful in all He does." Psalm 145:13

Rhett Butler said of Charleston in Gone with the Wind, "I'm going back to dignity and grace. I'm going back to Charleston where I belong." 

And we long to go back to a world of dignity and grace ... where promises are kept. Thank you, Shayna and Michael, for a spectacular wedding weekend and for the reminder of hope and joy in promises kept.

Grabbing for the Brass Ring

"I want the white one," Sadee yelled as she headed toward a pony with a gold halter.

"I want one that goes up and down," Claire said as she climbed aboard a black beauty with teeth bared.

"I'm getting one on the edge because I want to grab for the rings!" Mack declared as he picked a noble-looking stallion.

We were on the Grand Carousel at Knoebels' Amusement Park in Elysburg, PA. 

The central attraction of our summer vacation for the last seven years has been a trip to Knoebels for several days of camping and riding. My six grandkids have grown up a bit each summer on the 1913 carousel, one of the largest in the world and voted #1 "Best of the Best" in amusement history by Golden Ticket Awards for the past 17 years. 

The children's all-day wrist bands allow limitless rides, but the rider gets off after each ride, stands back in line where there is time to survey the herd, and boards again to choose another from the stable of 63 handsome horses.

The Grand Carousel Organ sets the tone. The old pipe organ plays what has been called some of "the happiest music on earth," with clashing cymbals, beating drums, bells, and trumpets. Much of the music is from an era long before my grandchildren. It's Sousa and Goodman, not Gaga and Underwood.

Sadee on Knoebels' Carousel, Summer 2019

As they've grown and taken on amusement park sophistication, the older grandkids have skipped the Carousel until later in their day and headed, first of all, to the Phoenix and the Twister to get their fill of roller coaster terror. But there has been a steady stream of younger children in the family who head directly to the very center of the park and its piece de resistance, the park's Grand Dame, the Carousel. We've been to Disney World, and Walt certainly has created a massive entertainment kingdom, but the joy of Knoebel's Park and the Grand Carousel are magnets for us.

One thing always draws the older ones back to the Carousel after they get their fill of hair-raising coasters: grabbing the rings.

To grab the brass rings, they have to sit on the outside rim of the merry-go-round. When the ride begins, a metal arm starts to dispense brass rings. The rider hopes the rise and fall of his horse will coincide with reaching the ring dispenser. There's a significant physical stretch involved as they lean precipitously off their horses. Sometimes they can grab the rings, and sometimes they grab air. The game is to see who can grab the largest number of rings. I've given up the reach for rings ... too many variables that might leave me in an embarrassing position on the floor.

Every year when I choose my horse and begin the musical loops, I think about the metaphor of this classic amusement ride. For what rings am I reaching? Am I trying to give my life significance by grabbing for all kinds of rings? 

Grabbing the brass ring is a cultural goal in America. We are on our horses and striving - for a bigger house, a second house, money, possessions, vacations, wardrobes, "bucket-list" experiences. Success is gauged by the rings we have accumulated. Grab what you can while still riding high. Don't fall off the merry-go-round. Aim to get more rings than the other game players. 

Those rings we've grabbed - are they an indicator of our significance, our purposeful lives, or our lasting satisfaction?

Exhausting. Fleeting. We're spinning endlessly, loop after loop of striving to put value in and on our lives. When in reality, it's all pretty temporary, a blink of the eye, passing pleasure, impermanence. 

Is there one, true brass ring for which we should be grabbing?

The Bible is clear - a relationship with the One True and Living God is the brass ring. Believe His promises. Abide daily in Him. Look to the good of others. Walk this life with His desires as the goal of our lives. This is eternity-lasting, untarnishable, brass solid significance.

Life's Grand Carousel of endless circling and grabbing can leave us empty and wanting. God's plan is for our eternal good, not for a temporary pacifier and amusement, a plan that will take us off the dizzying treadmill and galloping into personal fulfillment.

Grab for God's Brass Ring !

"Don't work for what spoils, but for what endures to eternal life, which Jesus gives ... Believe in the One God has sent." (Paraphrase John 6:27-29)
This is God's Brass Ring.

A Lesson from Mangroves and Banyans:

Breathing Roots

Sometimes, breathing requires thought, intention.

Sometimes, we need to find reasons for its natural ebb and flow or catch it when there's a pause like a stomach punch or a slap to the emotions.

January had some breathless moments for me, moments that required reflection, regrouping, reconsidering. Time to breathe. God knows our gasp, the skipped heartbeat, the need to intentionally inhale life when the wind has been knocked out of us.

"Breathe" has become a popular cultural admonition, bandied about often when someone is overexcited, stressed, or depressed. I've heard friends advise each other to "breathe." Not because they've stopped breathing, but because life caught them off guard, and mind and emotions needed to catch up with their changing climate. One local yoga salon even calls itself "Breathe." The idea behind the word: Slow down. Contemplate.

In January I went to Florida, a haven for America's elderly who are all contemplating ... their next breath. I needed to take some deep breaths. To "breathe," my old friends and I walked, each day, through one of the lovely parks in the Sarasota-Tampa Bay area: the Robinson Preserve, Coquina Beach on Anna Maria Island, Emerson Point Park, Selby Botanical Gardens, Myakka State Park, Ringling's Ca' d'Zan grounds.

The Creator draws powerful lessons for us from His Creation. Walks in these Florida parks left me with one overwhelming impression: ROOTS RULE. It is the incomparable power of roots that enables survival in the face of destruction. Roots, God reminded me, enable breathing.

Mangroves and banyans dot and edge these parks. The secret to their endurance and survival in a harsh environment is their roots, roots the Creator has groomed to breathe in the most difficult circumstances.

Mangroves are a twisted jumble of trees and shrubs, growing along rivers and shores in the topics. They are distinctive because they flourish from a tangle of roots. One mangrove seedling sends many roots into the soil eventually spreading into an entire thicket that becomes a birthplace and home for all kinds of creatures. The mangroves spawn a rich ecosystem along the coast.

Leaning into our roots ... Mangroves on Tampa Bay.

They are also remarkably tough, primarily because of their incredible capacity to put down roots that provide oxygen for respiration. Some mangroves grow pencil-like roots that stick out of the mud like snorkels. The roots are covered with breathing pores that can close to keep them from drowning.

Despite the twice-a-day flooding by tides that would kill any other tree, despite the salty water that is 100 times saltier than what other plants can tolerate, despite ocean storms and hurricanes, the mangrove thrives and multiplies, remaining remarkably resilient and strong in the buffeting, battering circumstances of their environment ... because of their unique breathing roots.

Banyan roots.

Banyan trees reconfirm the power of roots. Banyans are the world's biggest trees in terms of the area they cover (the world's largest in India covers 4 acres!). A banyan's roots are breathtaking! The Ringling grounds in Sarasota boast 14 banyans, and some are over 100 years old. They drop roots from their branches, like multi-armed monsters, until one tree becomes a forest of hanging roots. As the tree ages, the stilt roots improve its stability by providing a broader anchorage and support in unstable soil. The aerial roots also help the plant breathe. Like the mangroves, banyans become an ecological phenomenon, sustaining a vast variety of creatures.

These marvels of nature would fail without the roots that sustain, strengthen, and support them.

So what do we do when our grounders are ripped out? When some of our roots are gone? When our breathing is hampered or the things that make life breathable disappear?

Some of my important roots were lost recently. Within one week in January I watched my father step into eternity, followed immediately by a milestone birthday which our society uses as an old age marker. Our culture values roots like family and youth, but these roots are fragile and fleeting. They fail.

Stop and breathe.

But these are not the only roots that hold us in life's coastal hurricanes and twice-a-day tidal flooding. These are not the only roots that support us in old age, help us to become a rich social and spiritual system to enrich our world, sustain us in storms, and cause us to thrive in hostile environments. For roots like family and youth fade and die.

There are deeper roots, roots that won't rot, weaken, or succumb to change and upheaval. Put down in the rich soil of faith, our roots, linked daily to God, to eternity, to purposes beyond our selfish desires, to divine fulfillment ... these roots remain when all around us fails. Strong and tough like the mangroves. Stable and enduring like banyans.

A timely January trip to Florida was God's way of reminding me that my roots to youth and to generations of family here on Layton may disappear, but my roots in God's love, presence, and promises will thrive and survive even when I am 100, even when tempests circle.

Yes, ROOTS RULE, 

and I breathe today

with roots ...

On Layton.

"Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit." Jeremiah 1:7-8 

The Hole in the Church ...

on Layton

On Layton, near Justus Corners, is a lovely little church. Lovely might be a bit of hyperbole, although well-meaning in intent, for she has fallen into disrepair. 

Slatted shutters, some askew, all rotting, cover her windows against light and weather. Roaming critters might find easy access through a few hidey holes. Weeds encircle the structure, blossoming in the rain gutters and climbing some walls to engulf her. Large field stones beside the front steps have hiccupped out of place with the long winters. The white exterior has turned to dirty gray. The front door lock is the only shiny new part of her wardrobe, but even this slide bolt couldn't hold off looters as a limp kick might cause its collapse. 

Worst of all is the roof. The shingles jut and curl, disintegrate and rise, as if they would like to take

flight. But the ultimate slap in her face and her final humiliation are the holes in her roof, gaping and completing her progressive disintegration. A large pine tree landed on her in a storm last year. She stands hurt and forlorn, taking on rain and snow. But even in her aloneness, she sits humbly, waiting to welcome someone within her walls.

She is the Primitive Baptist Church of Justus, organized in 1835. Evidently, there are still a few members: 3, according to one of the families who once belonged. They no longer meet on Sundays, or any day for that matter. The bolt lock stays secure. Her simplicity and stature veil memories of covered dishes, picnics on the lawn, hymn sings, weddings, community friends, and a vibrant family life.

The one-room school house across the street, in use at the same time as the church beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, was demolished just this year. Perhaps the fate of the little church is sealed, for she stands still and alone, one of the last vestiges of our village life in Justus. The older generation dies, the younger moves to Houston or Memphis, and the voices of happiness and love that once filled the place are muffled and finally silenced.

I like to give the little church a good look every time I drive by or a nod or a thought about her days of singing and joy. She enjoys the recognition. Good to know she hasn't been forgotten.

Although it's only a quarter mile down the road from my home, it wasn't the church I grew up in. We weren't Primitive Baptists. Our church, a half mile in the opposite direction on Layton, was "American" Baptist ... whatever that meant and whatever the differences were between the two churches, I couldn't tell you. But some of my best friends went to the Primitive Baptist, and they were sterling family people. This little church bred them well.

Why, ever, in this miniscule community, would we have two Baptist churches and no other denominations? I wonder if perhaps doctrine or theology or practice differed just enough between them in the mid 1800s to warrant two Baptist churches.

And that reminds me of the hole in the church. Could a difference in doctrine or practice be a hole? The hole in the roof of the Primitive Baptist is glaringly offensive, driving me metaphorically to the "hole" in today's greater Church. For some people, perhaps the "hole" in today's Christian Church began with differences in doctrine and theology. Perhaps the "hole" in Church for some people is what they consider to be the hypocrisy of those who attend or maybe it's what they consider to be the irrelevance of the church's message to the world in which they live. Or perhaps the "hole" in the Church for them is their opinion of church goers as judgemental or narrow. No doubt about it - the Church has "holes."

But, when it comes to holes, let's keep the focus: God.

God, the Creator, knows with whom and what He has to deal. He made us! He had a plan for us. He loves us in our messiness and divisions and hypocrisy and judgmentalism and humanness ... I mean, really, who else would? And the plan was for His own Son Jesus to take the punishment for all those things we do and have done that cause us to fall so short of His standards. I deserve no mercy, no grace, but God took that "hole" in my soul and did a miracle of healing ... with the blood of Jesus.

God, the Lover of our souls, the One who will never leave or forsake, the Forgiver, Accepter, Completer of our lives ... our HOLE HEALER.

Don't let the holes you see in the church keep you from God.

I am ...

Grateful for the reminder of a humble church on Layton 

with a hole in its roof.

To view a YouTube video of the beautiful interior of the Primitive Baptist Church in Justus during its heyday, please go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeCgQUfHUFQ