Evenings around here come just before the sun ceases to light up the space around me. Usually, I am walking back toward the house after finishing what I call "evening chores," things like putting up tools, housing equipment, setting the electric fence around the garden, and making sure the water trough is full in the pasture. While it might seem like a busy moment, it has really turned into a time of quiet reflection. There are never any lights from heaven illuminating a way for my feet as day turns into night, but often there is a sense of divine presence somewhere there alongside of me.
Today as I was walking I found myself remembering with thanksgiving similar evenings at Young Harris College. Though a long time ago, the memories often seem as fresh as yesterday of those daily evening chapel gatherings for vespers. As I remembered those student led end-of-the-day worship moments, I could hear songs like "Now the Day is Over" and "Day is Dying in the West" hanging out in the recesses of my memory. For a brief moment there was a chapel bell ringing over the campus calling us to worship and the sound of voices singing.
I am not always sure how I got where I have been. Some of those places I never anticipated being a place of such spiritual shaping. I went to Young Harris College up in those North Georgia mountains for an education and got so much more. It was place where my spiritual life started taking shape. It was where the Holy Spirit led me into a time of figuring out what I did and not believe. Important matters of faith were being worked out in those days and mostly I was not aware of how I was being blessed. Those evenings with others there in the chapel were moments I sometimes fail to remember, but whenever they are, it is with gratitude to God that such a place was prepared and made ready for me and others like me who were starting out on the journey.
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2 comments:
Memories of the sound of the Chapel Bell resound in my mind. The rush from the dining hall to the chapel was always in anticipation. Who's going to lead the evening devotional tonight? What beautiful hymns will we sing? Whose experience will inspire us tonight? It is something that I often do not think about also. The fact that the place was prepared for us long before we encountered it hasn't really crossed my mind before. . . but since you have the same experience and feelings about it that I do, I can see it clearly now. . . looking back. "Shadows of the evening steal across the sky". Then someone who is speaking last reminds us to come back tomorrow evening to gather and share again. Perhaps someone else will see it and have the same memory...and the gift goes on. . .
Young Harris and the Susan B are among some of my most loved memories! Thanks for sharing this!
Margaret Milner Thomas
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