https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO7Qrhss_j8

While in graduate school I was on staff at a thriving church in rural Indiana. The senior pastor, Vernon Maddox, would take me on occasional visits to struggling churches in neighboring communities where we would bring a needed gift and listen to the pastor’s needs and personal concerns over lunch together. I learned the depth of a servants heart in those afternoon’s away from the office.

A retired missionary attended our church briefly and then he and his wife went to Hartford City, Indiana, a community of 5 or 6 thousand people, just north of our little hamlet to plant a new church. They began by meeting in a church that opened their basement to the new little fellowship. Soon they had a gathering of 15 or 20 people, his wife playing piano and teaching Sunday School while he preached and carried the pastors work.

He was my favorite visit. Rides home, through fields of green or grey, I’d tell Pastor Vernon how sorry I felt for a man with so Godly a heart living out his calling in the basement of a church in a town God barely remembered. What could be worse?

Then he lost his Sunday School teacher and pianist – his loving wife, so dedicated a lifetime partner in ministry -to an unexpected death.

Now alone, far from the place of his birth, Vernon said we were going to take him for lunch. I dreaded the moment. Untimely death had yet to visit our family. I had one funeral under my belt and already felt so sorry for this man’s calling that I didn’t think I could face him with the additional sorrow piled on.

I’ll never forget walking into that little church basement to the awful sounds of someone straining at a guitar. The missionary made pastor laid down a cheap instrument, greeted us, apologized for his struggle at playing and said that now that his wife was gone he was teaching himself to play guitar so they could still have Sunday worship. He was going on.

Pastor Vernon hugged him. Tears were shed. We went and enjoyed a healing lunch and all I could think was what did this guy do that God would punish him with a life like this?

It was years before I realized that his faith and commitment to his calling in places known only to God was the kind of single minded devotion that had kept the church alive across the centuries in countless other little towns like Ephesus, Corinth, Philippi, Hartford City and the list goes on and on. “Great is Thy Faithfulness!”

I confess that as we approach a season when I’ll be begging for turkeys, backpacks and Christmas presents for Siempre’s kids I’m inspired and motivated by my encounter with this loving servant of God as well as the willingness of a senior pastor who knew I had some important lessons to learn.

I’ve also discovered that images of the church with hip purple lighting on stage or a cooler than corporate image no longer attract me – they did once – not any more. I’ve seen so much that’s shallow take front and center while that which carried real depth was shining brightly in Hartford City or some other place that to the world appears to be “God forsaken,” But to The Father is as Holy as a cross or a simple manger.

You may not be sure of your calling or why God has let your life fall into such heartbreaking circumstances, maybe it’s time to pick up an old guitar, or whatever else is needed, and give thanks that He has plans for you in whatever Hartford City you’ve been planted. This is a season of Thanksgiving. Like every year I’m nervous, excited and somehow certain that God will do great things. I don’t want you to miss one moment of the miracle (even when it looks like little more than Light slipping out the basement doors of a forgotten gathering in some Hartford City) This is our moment. So many are waiting. You’re Invited!