Missing the familiar
Sometime ago I was talking to a friend who's about a generation older than I. We were talking about church when she told me about a small Presbyterian church quite near my place.
"But it's very small," she warned me (my current church is about 2,500 strong).
No problem, I said. Small can be good.
"And the congregation's mostly made up of elderly people."
So? Are you trying to say my green nails will give them heart attacks?
"And they sing hymns!"
Did she really expect me to recoil in horror? I grew up in a Methodist church, for crying out loud! Yes, we had normal "praise & worship" as most people know it, but we also had "responsive reading" -- where the worship leader reads one line of a passage (usually from the Psalms) and the congregation responds by reading the next line, and so on throughout the whole passage; we sang the doxology after collecting offering; we had a "hymn of preparation" just before the sermon and a "hymn of commitment" after it (and they really were hymns, bless Pastor Hwa Chien, who usually chose the particular hymns himself); we sang the "benediction" before the pastor gave the closing prayer-blessing. (In Youth Group, we'd recite the Numbers 6:24-26 benediction in unison, from memory.)
I miss all that.
The only vestige of it in my current church, which is also Methodist (in name, at least), is the pastor's closing blessing. "And now may the grace and peace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you, now and forevermore. Amen." For some reason I find these familiar words immensely comforting.
I leave you with the words of a hymn that has been playing in my head since yesterday:
Stand by me
When the storms of life are raging, stand by me;
When the storms of life are raging, stand by me;
When the world is tossing me
Like a ship upon the sea,
Thou who rulest wind and water
Stand by me.
In the midst of tribulation, stand by me;
In the midst of tribulation, stand by me.
When the hosts of sin assail,
And my strength begins to fail,
Thou who never lost a battle
Stand by me.
In the midst of faults and failures, stand by me;
In the midst of faults and failures, stand by me;
When I致e done the best I can,
And my friends misunderstand,
Thou who knowest all about me
Stand by me.
When I知 growing old and feeble, stand by me;
When I知 growing old and feeble, stand by me;
When my life becomes a burden,
And I知 nearing chilly Jordan,
O Thou Lily of the Valley
Stand by me.
*Words and music: Charles A.Tindley (1856-1933)