Station 2

STATION 2

Move inside Latimer Hall and walk deep into the building past the exposed concrete floor and onto the laminate flooring.  Look at the space.  Think about Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  See the empty pews and chairs that outline the walls?  Might those seats represent the spirit of church past, church present and church future?

What do those pews and chairs bring to your heart?  Church past?  Can you recall a time when the pews were full?  When the chairs were full?  Church present?  Perhaps, you are filled with praise and thanks to God for His guiding Spirit that led to our church merger?  In hindsight, might those empty pews and chairs symbolize what could have been two empty church bodies, broken by a COVID pandemic?  Church future?  Perhaps you see those seats as an invitation to fill them or ones like them for years to come?  Might they represent the potential of a multigenerational church body worshipping one God, in One Spirit, together in different styles?

Ezekiel 37: 1-5 says

The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.  He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”  I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”  Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!  This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 

Luke 19: 37-40 says

When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”  Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”  “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

Pray that God would make those empty seats cry out in worship.  That He would fill those seats, in this worship space and our sanctuary again.  Pray that meaningful worship would rise from this space as an offering to Our Father in heaven.  Pray as the Holy Spirit leads.  When ready follow the markings to Station 3.