Today I was in a coffee shop, and as I was sitting there sipping my coffee I noticed that every chair in the room had a small square shelf on the back. A simply carved wooden bracket that had once been the home of a hymnal or bible. There were over 30 of them in the room, and it caused me a lot of pain to think of where they had sat before their relocation to this shop. I took note of how the arms of the chairs were worn smooth, the edges worn down probably by the fidgeting hands of children as they sat listening to the pastor, or by the calm hands of the pastor as he waited to give his sermon, or maybe polished smooth by the anxious hands of mourners that had come to pray for comfort, over time notched by hymnals laid on the back of them as the choir stood up to praise the Lord. And now here they stood, empty as tombs, a yawning nothingness as if a cruel grave robber had come and ripped away all that was valuable. 30 worn and run down, wooden monuments of a church's burgeoning bankruptcy. I know that they are only chairs and that a church is only a building, and that it is we who hold the truth inside each of our hearts. But still, seeing those empty seats filled with apathetic shop-goers; empty cups thrown haphazardly in their wooden shelves... I thought of the empty church they came from... and of what it must have felt like to close the doors of the chapel for the last time knowing all the while that no one would go back in the sanctuary to praise God, knowing no marraiges would begin or sinners be reconciled at the altar, no new believers baptized in the baptistry and no babies dedicated to God at the pulpit...and then having to sell off those chairs one by one to a bidder who didn't care if they came from a church or from the dentist that had gone out of business down the street.... and it saddened me. How many churches will close selling the contents to pubs and coffee shops because they can't keep the doors open? I long as David did to "behold the glory of the Lord in the sanctuary"... to see empty seats filled by hungry believers and desperate unbelievers, by the wealthy and the poor, the joyful and sorrow filled, the sick and the well, those with homes and those who find themselves homeless, with the upright and those that are just down on their luck....so I guess I have to ask myself... if the doors of our churches are closing... is it because they did not open them wide enough?
