Yesterday in the mail came a little box, a little box the size of a red brick, but not as heavy. I smiled when I saw it; Janice assumed I had bought something, but this was an expected box from some friends in Miami.

Well, A friend. Sally’s husband just recently passed away, and in sorting through things she came across a whole bunch of pictures. I was in a variety of them, Janice, and the boys in others, but we were not the theme of these pictures, or the reason they were kept for 30 years.

Oh my! The memories. Memories not special so much by how old they were, but because of the people in them. Yes, my brother and mother and other family members made the pictures, but again, they were not the raison d’etre of this Kodachrome stack.

They came from a church. Not a single event, but a series of events through the years, events I remember and celebrate, but only as excuses for the gathering of these people. These events marked my “firsts” (kind of) in everything ministry-wise, because I received my first appointment there. Your first appointment as a pastor is kind of like having your first child:  it’s not that you haven’t changed a diaper before, or fed a baby, or laid a baby down, or messed with a car seat, but this time it’s YOURS! I had preached, performed weddings and funerals, and been to a million committee meetings before, but this time they were for MY church. I was responsible for ALL of it this time.

And, again, like children, every subsequent church was (and is) loved equally. Like your kids, no two churches are alike, their quirks and features (to quote Doug DeMuro) making them equally esteemed and cherished.

I think what was so endearing about these photos is that I found, my family had found, a place to belong. A place where we were accepted and appreciated, and where we found people to appreciate and love, too. That’s what the church is, a place where I belong, a place where my gifts are appreciated and used, a place where I can just “be.” 

I don’t know if I will get a stack of photos like this from First Boca someday. That stack of photos came from a time before cellphones became cameras. It was before the iPhone 3. I get plenty of photos sent to me. (And please don’t stop!)  But they come electronically, and in real time. We no longer have to drop off our rolls of film at the PhotoMat booth in the Kmart parking lot and then wait a week. Everything is digital and immediate now.

But I do hope that we all feel connected, valued, and loved here, and that we indeed share our photos because those that are in them are special to us. It’s one of the ways that we live into the Apostle Paul’s exhortation to “receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God” (Romans 15:7).

Who’s in your photos? And whose photos are you in?

Thumbing through the photos,

Craig

Precious memories, how they linger, how they linger in my soul…