So today after my husband and I drove out of the city a few miles to this little old historical church, I decided I didn't want to wait until Sunday to share it with you on Weekend Worship.
I didn't attend this church back then, actually didn't even know it existed, but I love it and love the setting especially since Little Rock just had seven inches of snow yesterday. That is the only significant snow since we moved back here almost six years ago.
My aunt who lived in Centralia, Illinois, Aunt Hazel, was a real prayer warrior, known for her staunch Christianity but behind closed doors she could let her hair down with the best of them. She used to have some funny stories she told that she swore (did good Christian aunties swear back then?) were true. If you've heard them before, then you will know they were infamous or else not true.
One story she told went like this--Old Bro. Sam Hill got up to testify (many times these "give God all the glory" meetings turned into "confession" meetings) and really got wound up telling about his knarled life of sin and shame and how God had delivered him but he had had a few setbacks the past week and felt so bad that he didn't feel worthy to even be standing there (of course he was on the front row) and felt so bad, felt like he ought to back behind the door.
No sooner had Bro. Hill finished his "testimony" than ole fiery Sister Smith jumped up and said she knew just exactly how he felt and thought she ought to be back there behind the door with Brother Hill.
Sounds like they both might need to be "rebaptized" in this little creek--LOL! Just kidding!!!!!!!!!!!
Another funny story she told about prayer meeting night went something like this: Sister Jones got up to testify and to also offer up a prayer request. It seems that her husband (a notorious character who sometimes darkened the church doors on Christmas or Easter) was ill, very ill, even to the point of being at death's door. She ended the request with this statement--"Please pray that God will pull him on through."
Some glad times were had by all in these little country churches. The first little church I went to like this had a pot-bellied stove right in the middle of the altar area and pews made of clapboards spaced a couple of inches apart. They could get mighty hard when you had one of those long-winded preachers but its funny how when I became a teen-ager and my boyfriend walked in and sat down beside me, I might as well have been sitting on a cloud.
So take a peek inside and let your mind go free--free to worship with these saints of old, these our ancestors who prayed many prayers for us. Who knows, maybe one of the prayers that came from this old church is the reason I am a believer today.
Oh, if these knarled old trees could talk. I can imagine them speaking of high-topped leather shoes and braided crowns of hair on the older women, funeral home fans, buzzing flies, and mason jar water bottles in the summer time, new babies lying in cardboard boxes padded with hand-stitched quilts, old song book with shaped notes, accordions, mandolins, banjos and fiddles, dinner-on-the-ground, and all-day fellowship meetings every fifth Sunday of the month.
Willard Stone, a famous artist who used to live outside of Tulsa an hour or so used knarled pieces of wood like these to produce internationally acclaimed works of art. One of the articles I have linked to here says, "He could take a block of wood and create rhythm, movement and poetry." That is what I like to think God does with these old knarled lives of ours.
Is your life feeling a little knarly today? Just quietly give Him, the God of the Universe, permission to unravel the knots of your life, trust Him to complete it in His time, and hold on tight to the faith of our fathers and mothers.
