Remembering Churches

In these later years of my life, I remember with such gratitude the church that nurtured me as I was on my way to faith in Christ.  Almost before I have memories, my mother was taking me to Sunday School at the base chapel where my father was stationed.  After his death and our return home, there were other churches such as Pierce Chapel out in the country where my father was buried, First Methodist in Waycross, Ga. which was not too far from the place we first lived, and later the Hebardville Church out on the edge of town where I was baptized.      

And while there were others, the one remembered like home was the Alamo Methodist Church in a small town by the same name.  It cared for me in my teenage years, gave me numerous opportunities to kneel at its altar, affirmed my call to preach, and sent me on my way into the future with a fledgling faith in Christ.  No matter how much education came my way over the years that followed, these churches provided a nurturing which not only set me on my way, but has sustained me for a life time.   

Lately, as I passed through some towns which are remembered mostly because I had friends who were cared for by the church on some corner in that town, I find myself remembering them and being thankful for a church that shaped them and enabled me to be influenced by their faithful living at a time when I could have gone another way.  What I have come to know in these recent days is that the church of all our childhoods helped put us on the road of faith and as we walked that road we were blessed by the presence of those we came to know as friends and the faith that was planted in each of us by some church from our past.