I was glad when they said to me, “let us go up to the house of the Lord!”
I remember many, many years ago when I was getting ready to go to worship with my brother. I was sitting down with the Grand Rapids Press on the footstool and was sorting through the different coupons and sales fliers which always seemed to make the paper twice to three times as thick as I thought it should be. On the side sat the fliers which I wanted to look through or that I thought that one of the family might want, as well as the “important” sections of the paper. The time to leave was getting close and Rob hadn’t come down yet. I yelled up to him asking if he was coming with me or was going to go with Mom. You see Heartside had a worship start of 11:30 while our home church started at 9:30.
As the deadline to leave crept closer he came down and we loaded ourselves into the car and headed off to worship. This scene would repeat itself for the next few months. Until each of us found ourselves in a different setting and the good habit and normal grind changed. Instead of going to worship where we had been raised since well our birth we each separately had to form a new routine, in a new space and new place. And when circumstances found us in that repetitive and normal space routine clicked and it was as if we hadn’t been away at college for the last four months.
Much of what had been has changed. Now days I don’t read the GR Press at all let alone gather and separate the fliers in it. I don’t even drive to worship but walk across the parking lot. Rob’s reality has shifted too. Instead of an older brother badgering him to get ready for worship he is the badgerer and his boys the badgerees. Time, and life has changed quite a bit since the late nineties and early two thousands. But that is just a drop in the bucket compared to the timeline which we are about to celebrate as a congregation. Very few if any of the original founding congregation names are still here. The routine to begin worship has changed, since we don’t have a furnace which needs to be started and wood fed into it.
Think for a moment how different worship is now as opposed to that first Sunday in 1801. No electricity. No paved parking lot. No cars to ride to worship in comfortably. Much has shifted and changed over the last 225 years of this worshiping body’s life. But there are some things that even though everything else has changed will always stay the same. While there may be a bit of difference in the language which our Bibles are written in they are still an integral part of worship. Again our hymns might be in a different language and might use different musical technology to play them they are still focused and centered on God and telling the story of God. From the sermon, communion and other parts all still make up our offering of worship. Although the how might have changed a little bit.
Most of all our purpose our reason for worship is still the same. We still gather together to praise God for all the many blessings and ways in which God is, was, and will be present in our lives. As our days of celebration of the 225th anniversary of Hurley Reformed’s founding come closer let us celebrate. On May 30th we will gather from 10-2 with the greater Hurley community to celebrate and give thanks for our community. And on June 7th at 10 for worship we will gather and praise God for all that God has done for us and through us over these many years. As these two celebrations get closer may we listen to the words of the Psalmist and say, “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, his love endures forever.” Whether it is year 1, year 225 or year 2??, let us give thanks and praise for all that God has done, and is doing. Amen.