The Finished Product

This past Sunday morning, we reconsecrated the sanctuary building of one of my churches. You may remember that I wrote about the sanctuary renovation project before. Well, before Christmas 2007 arrived, the "steel implants" were set. You can see them in the picture above. Just look up in the corner and above the light.

So we enjoyed Christmas, celebrating the gift of the Christ-child inside the gift of a stronger, different-looking, renovated sacred space that will be standing now for generations to come who can "come and adore Him" here.

But we were not finished. And we knew it. For when the steel supports, cables, and turnbuckles were placed, they disturbed the very old shingles all over the roof. So we knew that Lent would bring yet another major project and expense, the placement of a new roof (we're talking another $22,000, people) on our church's buildings. And it did. Needless to say, when the roofing work was finally finished a few weeks ago (not coincidentally in the Easter season), we wanted to hold a special Homecoming and Re-consecration service, which we enjoyed this past Sunday.

In the children's sermon at this service, an astute five-year-old got my point right away when I explained how the wood beams had not had enough strength to hold up the roof all by themselves, so they had needed to have some metal put in to help them. Of course, before I could say it, she told me that that was just like how we need Jesus in our hearts to have the strength we need, that we're not strong enough on our own to be the people God wants us to be.

These kids are too smart for me!!

But one other thing kept running through my head that day, another metaphor about the roof and reconstruction. It was a metaphor of gratitude and awe, a metaphor I never dreamed would be true the first few weeks I was here and feeling the anxiety of a small South Carolina church that had never had a female pastor before, not to mention a tiny young single one!

What kept running through my head and heart as we celebrated this past Sunday was this: God has had a plan for this church and me to be in ministry together for almost six years and counting. I know that, since, over the years in which I've been here as pastor, we've worked together to reconstruct this church family and community of Christ from the inside out. Things have changed. The household looks different than it did before. And, my friends, it is stronger in Christ, firmer on its Foundation, than it was six years ago.

I haven't done it; the members of the church family haven't done it. God has done it through all of us together, and through the partnership we enjoy. I can see the evidence of it as clearly as I see the black-coated steel implants in the sanctuary. And I thank God for it, because I know what it means: this church will stand firm on its Foundation for decades to come, and will keep being a sacred place for generation after generation to encounter the Lord Jesus Christ whom we worship and adore each Sunday.

Praise and thanks be to God for the "finished product" of the reconstructed sanctuary, and the "unfinished" project of the reconstituted family of faith that worships in it!