an honor

Sitting in church yesterday, we honored a life, 87 years.

Foundations.

A life of faith.

Floyd started going to Chapel when he was three months old! He attended all his life, except for one year.

His family honored him with devotion and rightly so. This man was soft spoken but had a huge heart. It was an honor to celebrate his life and his legacy. It was an honor to call him friend. It was Holy Ground.

Funerals have a way of bringing you to your knees, and help you look back at the times in your life where you probably were shown mercy and grace and you came out unharmed. It reminds you of times where you should have forgiven or been forgiven. It brings to mind those who we miss, and those who we have been blessed to know along the road.

Sitting in church yesterday, I remember my distinct thoughts about a particular stain glass window at church. It has been several years ago and I was sitting in church looking at the window and seeing in my own life, how the foundation of faith was put into place when I was young. When you go through trials in your life, you hope that your faith is strong enough to sustain you and you hope that God knows your name because you desparately need Him to rescue you. The weird thing about this stain glass window was that it was suspended in my mind over a solid foundation and that is all there was.

A foundation and a stained glass window.

Then God began to show me that I needed more than a foundation of faith. That I had something to build upon and what was I going to do with my foundation and my stained glass window? Maybe some walls? Some rooms? At that time I didn't know. All I could visualize was the window just blowing in the wind. I knew I had some work to do.

Where do you begin when you have fallen away from what you know is the truth? How do you start building your life around those things when life got hard and you walked away? The road got bumpy and looked nothing like you had imagined.

Sitting in church yesterday, I realized that God planted me in this church, to grow, to serve and to love God with all my heart, soul and mind. And I have had wonderful saints who lead by example. God knew I needed a soft place to fall.

This is my 'local living church'. We are a family. We rejoice together, we mourn together, and we have a lot of potlucks.

Sitting in church yesterday, I heard and witnessed a life of service, and how Floyd served his family. I tried to picture my stained glass window and my foundation and started to inspect some of the areas in my life that God has raised up and pushed me beyond my comfort zone. Some areas that He has helped me build up and some areas where I've had to tear down, release and let the sump pump of life just push it out.

As I left church yesterday, I felt God stir my heart, renew my spirit, and gave me a new building permit. My faith journey has been revived and God is equipping me for what is to come.