Preface: There were four huge video screens of fire to the left and right of the man....who was wearing a large silver cross around his neck....distinctive over his black t-shirt....rapping I guess is what they call it. The stage appeared as a furnace....or something much worse? The only words I could identify were....fight fight....and American badass. Another speaker....a fight promoter I take it....was also shouting....and I heard the same word....badass....over and over. In amongst this somewhere was Franklin Graham....his words seemed scripted....probably given to him or suggested anyway....and then he prayed....but I could not continue to listen to it because of the total absurdity of the moment....and went back to the movie that I was watching on ROKU....a 2013 Christian film....Return To The Hiding Place. I watched it on my computer the other day....but watched it again on the television. I wonder how many pastors experienced what I had....watching that stage....possibly some well-known ministry pastors....and I wonder if they will be changed in their pulpits tomorrow? The following short story....from an October 2023 post.....came to mind.
A Once Beautiful Home
There it was.....the home of my youth....sitting on a hill overlooking the town....to me it had always been as the Acropolis....for it was the pride of the community. We moved away when I was fourteen....to the other side of the country. I had prospered....became a lawyer...and was up and down my new coast dozens of times....and around the world three times....but by some strange twist of fate....never back to my home town....until today.
The sun was out and the white paint on the wooden framed mansion looked as bright as it ever had....this from the bottom of the long road up to the home.
The closer the Uber came....the more the white paint appeared dingy. The driveway was almost unusable for the holes and the sinking and the parts that seemed to be washed away.
By the time that we pulled up to the front door there were tears coming down one cheek. This was the home that I had once loved.....and that had stayed in my memory as the most secure place in the world....and from the outside it was....dilapidated. It had been lived in all these years. What possibly could have happened? There were shades of gray....not curtains....on all the windows. My uncle Sam....a carpenter....had made a five by seven foot wood carving of an eagle that he permanently attached above the front door. It was rotting. The ornate railing along the long curving porch was hard to decipher because of the fragmented paint chips everywhere.
I had originally asked the Uber driver if he could wait for about thirty minutes as I simply walked the grounds and reminisced....but I would now not need thirty minutes....for that would be a half hour of anguish. I walked around the porch that circled the entire house....taking care not to twist an ankle in parts of the wood that were no longer there.
One window provided a look into the living area as the shade had ripped from top to bottom. Much of the furniture was still there from when I was a boy....the piano and the grand desk and the benches along the stairs and the book shelves on the one wall....and the chandelier! I remember laughing as I would slide down the banister. Everything was covered with dust and there were cobwebs throughout. I tapped on the window to try to loosen some dust to see more clearly and the noise startled an animal....I have no idea what it was I was in so much shock...a rat or a raccoon.....I don't know nor do I care.
I turned to walk as quickly as I could back to the Uber and did twist my ankle in the rotting floorboards of the porch deck. It hurt....but I hobbled as best I could back to the car....stumbling again going down the steps....falling and twisting my knee. The Uber driver came to help but there was more pain in my heart than my legs.
Laying there on the ground next to me was a document enclosed in a clear folder. It had staple marks on all the corners and had obviously once hung......probably on the front door....under the bald eagle....and had most likely been ripped off by winds. The document stated that the house was officially condemned....but was not to be torn down because the determination was still in the courts.
What had happened to my home. How could anyone let it become what it was? I was angry....and then I remembered the telephone call....twenty years previous. I was building my law firm. The caller owned the property and said that he could no longer properly maintain it....and that I could purchase it if I wanted.....to protect it.....and maybe turn it into an attraction of some sort for people to see. I had the means to do this....but thought that others would find a way to protect the house and the property. The caller seemed to be pleading.....but his cries fell on deaf ears....and I saw that I was as responsible as anyone else for not protecting this piece of history.
On the ride back through town I asked the driver to turn down a side street....to at least look at the church our family attended....where my father would herd us all in and then sit upright in the pew to honor the hearing of the preached gospel of Jesus Christ. The landscaping of the church was immaculate. The spire was still there shining in its copper brilliance but the cross was no longer on top. The name had of the church had changed....no longer Sovereign Grace Baptist....but Community Family Church. The marquis displayed the pastor's name and title of this week's sermon....Happiness Is Our Choice.
