Sunday at St. Elizabeth's

One of the hymns we sang this Sunday was "Ask Ye What Great Thing I Know." It was also one of the hymns we sang on a Sunday morning some seventeen years ago when I preached my first sermon at a small Methodist church in rural Kentucky. This Sunday, I was preaching, as I have been each Sunday for the last four months, at St. Elizabeth's Parish in northeast Columbia. You won't find it in any church directory. We don't have a web site. St. Elizabeth of Hungary is the patron saint of nursing homes. The "parish" where I now preach is the LifeCare Nursing Center. My congregation consists of its mostly wheelchair-bound residents, many of whom have been left there by family members who had run out of all other care options. A good number of them fall asleep before I'm finished preaching. Some have already dozed off before they are brought in by the nursing staff. Those who are lucid and alert enough tend to do a lot of crying, especially when we sing a familiar hymn.

I got a touch emotional myself when we sang the hymn that reminded me of that Sunday long ago when I first stood behind the pulpit. When I stepped out in faith from the comfortable confines of local parish ministry three years ago, this was not where I expected to find myself every Sunday morning. I was embarking on the great adventure of church planting, and that meant ministry to the emerging generation of the "unchurched," or so I thought. But, as the saying goes, nothing every goes as planned. My congregation turned out not to be the "unchurched" generation, but the generation which has never known life outside the church--until now, when they need it the most!

A fall from grace? I don't think so. God's Word is ever faithful, and the text on which I preached this Sunday, every bit as enthusiastically as I did that Sunday in rural Kentucky, was a powerful reminder of that.

And the Lord answered me:
"Write the vision;
make it plain on tablets,
so he may run who reads it.
For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it;
it will surely come; it will not delay.
"Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him,
but the righteous shall live by his faith.

(Habakkuk 2:2-4)