Out Of The Past

FRI., JUNE 7, 1991, 6:14 AM
FARM, STUDY

One of the wonderful advantages of achieving the young-old status that now is yours is the length and depth of your past. Your mind and spirit can bring up pictures of life as a child, an adolescent, a single young man, a young husband and father, a maturing professional, the father of teenagers… on up to the recent past in your happy elderly status. Let Me, the Holy Spirit, guide you on one of many possible remembrances from out of the past.

You remember well the old Methodist church where you went each Sunday through your high school years. Remember the corner Sunday School room with Don Baker, but none of the others “have faces.” You were surprised when you saw the Camp Redford picture after many years… surprised at the number of young people who were in that group that you had forgotten. Photographs do help to restore memories… one technological development of which I highly approve.

Skip now to your first teaching position at Punahou and the wonderful sanctuary of Central Union Church. You sang in the choir and began to nurture a love for the music of the Christian tradition. Bring up the picture of singing the Messiah, even the Hallelujah Chorus on a warm December evening with a full congregation standing. Then picture that important evening in, ironically, the Atherton Chapel, when I joined you and Lenore together, with My servant Ken as the one conducting. You have had some wonderful Sundays in that Church, and there shall be yet a few more.

Then came the Menlo Park Church, and you bring up the picture of a wedding anniversary enactment, an evening ceremony in the church and a “reception” in the fellowship hall following. See the picture of the back room where your born-again experience with Me began. Whether it was with the Gospel of John or the Letter to the Romans is not important. Just give them both the deserved credit. John was there, but no other recognizable faces.

In the Palo Alto Church you see again the communion service in the front of the sanctuary, and you, as an elder, are serving the elements, with an invitation to each communicant… This is the Bread of Life… and the Cup of Blessing. You can also recall that communion led by Malcolm, that most memorable taking of the elements… but the faces have faded. I am disappointed that you didn’t share the message I gave you about communion with the group last evening. You knew you were to offer it, but you didn’t.

Now you have had many good Sundays in this Carbondale Church, with its now familiar sanctuary. You can bring up the pictures of you preaching and of your classes, in the variety of strange rooms you were given. And for a few years the Cobden church, on the hill, was your home, and that remains familiar.

There are contrasts, like the picture of you and young son Michael singing together and then the more recent remembrance of not being able to take communion with him and his family in their elaborate sanctuary. And, of course, the contrast with taking communion on a Christmas morning with son Bob and his family, kneeling at the rail. That, then brings back the North Conway picture, being served by David, in My Name.