I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

The Morning Drive

The stairs at the front of the church building where I once talked to friends, or watched three little girls and their friends play. The post office where I frequently purchased stamps, or mailed the monthly newsletter our church published. The school where our good friend Eileen served as principal, or the little house on Second Street where Eileen and her husband Joe often entertained us and our girls. The library where my wife worked part time. The two funeral homes where I frequently conducted funerals. John's Appliance and Service Center, where "John" was not just a company name, but a name of a friendly and godly man who didn't just sell and service appliances, but loved and served God and people.

All of these scenes and more spread before me as I drove recently around LPO, the River Valley of north central Illinois where I and my family lived for twenty-one years, from 1974 to 1995. L for LaSalle, P for Peru and O for Oglesby, the three towns along the Illinois River all tied together into one community. I lived here. I served here. My wife and I raised our kids here. Oglesby was our home.

That was all more than seventeen years ago. In seventeen years, many things change. But it is surprising how many things stay the same. It was the things that are still the same that got my attention as I drove around listening to WLPO, the radio station on which our church used to have a monthly broadcast. On the station that used to broadcast my voice once a month, it is now Rush Limbaugh's voice that dominates the air waves every day. The station still sits squarely across the street from the Illinois Valley Community College where I used to teach English and Speech classes part-time.

Our church is no longer located in the old building located at Porter and Woodland. The little house next door where we lived is no longer the parsonage. It is also no longer red, a color I applied inch by inch because my wife preferred red to the yellow that was on the house when we arrived. Someone else now lives there and has painted the house a burnt orange. But the driveway where I parked our cars, and the little stairway down to the sidewalk in the front are still there, just as they were when we were the residents of the house.

The church now has a new building at the edge of town, a good modern building with plenty of parking, which we never had, and no stairways to impede people, as we had. God was good to the people in giving them this building.

But where I once was a member of the community, I was now just a visitor, an outsider, a non-resident. Many of the folks I knew are gone. Some have simply moved away; others have moved up, to Heaven.

But two things impressed me as I drove around LPO. First, I was impressed how quickly everything became familiar to me again. Streets, buildings, traffic patterns, signs, the river itself flowing through the middle of it all. Though it had been many years, it seemed like it was just another day and I was driving to pick up my kids from school, or going to do a funeral, or visit a member of the church. It was all as familiar as the routes I now regularly drive near my Columbus, Ohio home.

But the other thing that impressed me was the fact that God is still at work in LPO. There are still believers there, seeking to serve Him. There are still churches there, seeking to be a lighthouse for God in the darkness of this sin-cursed world. There is even another pastor, whose announcement I heard on WLPO, broadcasting the message of Christ to the community.

I enjoyed driving through what was once my home, triggering countless memories and pleasant experiences. But it is no longer my home, and no longer my ministry. But as it was when this was my home and ministry, it is still where God is working, and still where the Holy Spirit is ministering to bring sinners to faith in Jesus Christ. Thank God that LPO is still very much on His heart and very much the object of His love.