A Lovely New Church

This past weekend I was reminded of a place very dear to my heart that I do not often think of anymore. This place is the little log cabin behind my grandparents' house, the place where we used to have church. When I was in middle school I wrote a memoir about the cabin and it made my mom cry. I tried to find it today thinking I could just use it here, but I couldn't find it as quickly as I wanted. So instead, I will write again of the log cabin church.

When I was about two years old, my grandfather felt the Lord calling him to start a home-mission church. My granddad had been given a small log cabin by a neighbor and decided this would be a good place to start his work. So, there we were, my granddad and grandmama, my two uncles, and my family (which, at the time, only consisted of my parents, my sister Rebekah, and myself). I'll be honest, since I was only two I don't remember much of the details about the early years in the cabin. When I remember the cabin, the crowd was a little larger.

Evidently, soon after my granddad started the church, souls began to be added to the kingdom, in more ways than one. Not only were we baptizing people in the river and seeing them turn to the Lord, also one of my uncles got married, and my parents had more kids. Some of my best memories as a child occurred on the front porch swing of the cabin with my sisters and two cousins, Lexi and Rebecca.

I'm not even sure where to begin when talking about this place because, as is with all places I'm sure, there isn't just one memory there, but a multitude. For instance, of course, we had church there. When I went in the cabin yesterday (which is what reminded me of all of this) it seemed much, much smaller than it did when I was a kid. Looking back, we were cramped in there! No wonder it was so hot during the summer. My dad played the guitar, my [now] youth pastor's brother played the saxophone, there was a lady who played the accordion (do people still play those?) and my mama sang. I mean she SANG. And that is where I learned to sing, and where my sisters learned to sing. And sometimes, there would be so many people there, they would have to sit outside, which was what we all did during the summer because it was so hot. We had Sunday School in my grandparents' house and Easter egg hunts in their yard.

One time, we had a summer festival. We invited the whole neighborhood and had games, prizes, skits, music, and food. One time, my mom got excited during church and started dancing and we were so close she hit me right in the nose. One time, we all memorized the 23rd Psalm and quoted it in front of the whole church (I still remember it!). One time, there was a wedding there.

Perhaps what I remember the most about that old cabin is the hand-drawn thermometer on the wall, where we kept track of how much money we had saved for the new church building. Every Sunday I would watch the number grow and I would get excited about building the new church.

Today, Sunday services are no longer held in the cabin. Instead we have traded paper fans for air conditioning, folding chairs for pews, and good acoustics for a sound system. Though all these things are great, the cabin, in my mind represents something much greater than a place where people used to gather to worship. It is the place where everything started. My life as it is was shaped by the vision that built that log cabin, so every now and then I go and stand in there and remember that God and I, and many others started our journey in that place, and I am thankful.