Untold Stories

Seldom do I take a road trip without wondering about the stories some old about to fall down house might tell if about to fall down houses could talk.  The same kind of thoughts go through my head when an old forsaken looking church appears in the countryside, or at some crossroad.  Even as old houses could be seen as places where the stories of families could be told so are old abandoned churches places where memories of holy moments linger.   

The Pierce Chapel Church out in the middle of nowhere is one of those small churches which looms large in my memory.  My first memory was birthed the day my father was put to rest in its cemetery.  Later I learned that my great grandfather on my mother's side of the family gave the land for the cemetery which now holds the graves of many who are family.  The church back then was Methodist and served those backwoods rural families that worked the nearby fields.  Sometime ago the church became an abandoned Methodist Church, was bought by some Baptist folks, and continues its ministry under that banner.   

In my mind it will always be a Methodist Church.  While my mother never spoke of the place where she came to faith in Christ, this small church was surely a place that nurtured her as a young girl on her journey to faith.  When it was time to bury her husband and my father, it was to that church that she returned.  I long to know more of the story, but those who might have had memories of those years and those lives are gone and so are the stories that could have been told, but now only linger in the air around that holy place which speaks of people coming to faith and others being laid to rest as they finished the journey Home.