I passed by a church on my walk tonight. This church has been in my hometown for a while, and been in my life for all of it. My best friend's father became the pastor after a man that our family lovingly called "Grampa Straiter" stepped down. Since then the church building has housed several different faiths, including the Baptists it hosts now.
The building is simple, white, and small, and even though it has changed and expanded over the years, it is still nothing more than a couple of rooms. Next to it is a long brick building that hasn't changed at all.
I remember being little and getting delight out of being the one to suggest the next hymn. I remember I would always suggest "The Old Rugged Cross". Not necessarily because I liked it, but because my Grammy did, and even if she wasn't there, we might as well sing a song that somebody liked.
I remember standing in the bright sunlight of an Easter morning, on the black top in front of the red brick building, decked out in dresses that Mom made and eager to get to the sunrise breakfast that would precede the service.
Or being in the youth group and spending the better half of the evening getting rug burns in a hearty game of dodge ball.
Or attending summertime VBS and making crafts, some of which I still have.
Everyone in the church, but for my family, was elderly. That's part of why we left.
Eventually even so aged a crowd managed to out grow the building and our old church raised money and built a building outside of town where they still hold services.
Since then I've been to a million churches.
But my walk carried me past the church's doors and I noticed that the lights were on. It is, after all, the Friday before Easter.
I walked up to the doors and peered through them, listening to the wailing and weeping and gnashing of teeth going on inside.
Then a little three year old child came running up to the veranda style doors that lead to the vestibule and pushed her way through them, making a beeline for the standing water cooler tucked into the corner.
No one came chasing after the child and she seemed perfectly contented as she moved the trash can away from where it stood, propping the doors open, dragged it to the cooler, and started fishing discarded water cups out of it.
Then, with no understanding of communicable diseases or the dangers there in, she proceeded to fill, and drink from, every single cup.
Following this fearless fete came the passing of water from one cup to another before it went into her mouth. And the occasional moment when she would either dump or spit water back into the trash can.
She finished her performance by meticulously seating one cup into another until she had a stack, then dumping them back into the trash can and returning to the sanctuary. No adult noticed. No adult went after her.
I didn't think of it then, but I hope now that God protected the poor girl from disease and sickness and that someone, somewhere down the line will teach her to do otherwise.
What I was thinking of at the time was very different however.
I was thinking about Easter.
About Jesus pouring water that turned to wine.
About Jesus pouring wine that turned into the mark of a traitor.
About that traitor leading Jesus to His arrest and capture and ultimately to His crucifixion.
About how we call Jesus the Living Water...and about a certain woman at a well.
And about how often water is used in the Bible, primarily because it is so absolutely necessary to life.
And how a room full of wailing, moaning, convulsing adults was nothing compared to the simplistic testimony of a little girl getting complete fulfillment from a cup (or more) of water.
Kinda like the adults wailing in D.C., making noise and calling it a fight for freedom. When the true freedom is as simple as taking a drink of water.
I dunno...
Happy Easter..
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