Sights and Insights
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. – Ephesians 3:14-19 (NRSV)
Our latest adventure in home decoration is that we added a pew. I know it’s almost cliché for a household with two pastors to decide that what was missing in the house was a church pew, but that is exactly what happened. We had been on the lookout for a bench that would work for our kitchen table. After months of keeping an eye out, it occurred to me that a pew would fit our idea for the space perfectly. Looking around in classified ads, I came across a person who had a garage full of pews that she was giving away for free. Her church had been remodeled, and so she had agreed to take the old pews until she could find homes for them. It is a lovely solid wood pew with red upholstery that fits perfectly by our kitchen table.
When we got the pew home, we noticed a card rack on the back. I am assuming welcome cards or communion cards had been in it. As we looked, we noticed a slip of paper crammed in it. Had someone passed a note during worship? Was it some sermon time doodling? It took some work to get the paper out of the crack it was jammed in to find out. It turned out to be a young child’s drawing of a flower. A memory of a moment of trying to keep a little one occupied during worship. I can remember how desperate that task felt sometimes when my children were little.
There’s something to having this bit of life and history in our kitchen furniture. Certainly, our main reason for putting the pew there is that it looks good and functions they way we hoped it would. Yet I am sure that we could have continued shopping and found something new that would have worked just as well. Having this small human connection to some unknown family who worshipped and tried to live faithfully brings some character to the space. Indeed it helps bring to mind the many people who sat in that seat to hear God’s Word and sing praises to God. I do not actually know what congregation or even what denomination that pew came from, and yet I know there is a history of faith in those seats.
Yesterday was All Saints Day, and we will celebrate it this coming Sunday. All Saints Day reminds us of the history of faithful people who have gone before us. Most of them are anonymous to us; we don’t know the places that they worshiped or the traditions that they held. Yet the imprint of this long history of faith is still with us. It gives character and depth to our life, and to the ways that we live out our faith. More than that, we proclaim that those faithful people who have gone before us remain with us, joining us in our communion and in our worship of God. The pew is a helpful image of this long procession of real life and real faith that constitutes the communion of saints that is eternally present and supporting us in our faith.