A Prayer to Borrow

for those who have lost their church building due to fire

This post is in addition to my regular end of the month post. As I watch the news and see the many lives uprooted and the mounting losses of important places, grief sets in. My heart is heavy and I whisper prayers which seem inconsequential at such a time as this. But I pray anyways because this is what I know to do when I do not know what else to do.

In 2016 our church burned to the ground. In the aftermath, I learned to pray honest and anguished prayers. I learned that to acknowledge and account for the losses did not keep me stuck in them, but helped me move through the grief. We know the building is not the church—the people are–and yet, it was important to lament and mourn all we had lost. Innumerable significant moments had passed while in the shelter of these walls. I wrote a lament reckoning with some of my personal losses. I hope these words provide comfort and companionship in your grief. May they provide space for you to voice the loss.

image from The Edmonton Journal

Searching for Home

In light of all that was so suddenly lost,
O Lord, in light of all we had gathered
but could not keep,
comfort us.^[i]

What began as wisps of smoke stealing up the back stairs, quickly turned into an inferno which devoured the place we gathered to worship. Just before Christmas flames engulfed the building we, as a family, had called our church home for the last 24 years. This place had stood as a beacon of light in the community for many decades. In some form, this church has been in this town since 1939. Those who were tossed about on stormy seas had found true belonging here amongst their fellow castaways.

Bernice and Judy had rocked my babies from their earliest days in this building. It was within these walls my children first understood how much they were loved by God, where they prayed with friends, and became part of a faith community. It was here we worshipped, enjoyed pot-luck dinners, and had silent auctions. There were weddings, baby showers, garage sales, funerals, bible studies, and Christmas concerts.

We were shaped by this place,
and by the living of our lives in it,
by conversations and labors and studies,
by meals prepared and shared,
by love incarnated in a thousand small
actions that became as permanent a part of this
structure as any nail or wire or plank of wood.

In so many ways our family had made its home here, among these people who stretched us, loved us, and stood with us through the maze of raising children and pursuing a life of faith. This house had become so much more than a building, it was a receptacle of memories of many “firsts” in a life, a place whose walls recorded years of conversations, celebrations, and whispered laments. This building became a witness to the growth of a family. We feel the loss of it, wondering if our memories and our relationships will also be reduced to a heap of ashes.

Our nerves are frayed, O God. Our sense
of place and permanence is shaken,
so be to us a foundation.

While we struggled to come to terms with our displacement, we became aware of the millions forced from their places across the world. So many were wandering, seeking safety, longing for home. We are not alone, we are in the company of so many without a place they once knew.

Comfort us, O Lord,
in the wake of what has overtaken us.
Shield us, O Lord, from the hurts
we cannot bear.
Shelter us, O Lord,
in the fortress of your love.

We felt acutely the uncertainty and the unsettledness which stretched before us. Would we again have a place to gather in safety, a place where our children could grow and flourish, and where we could sink our roots down once again? Would we be able to re-gather our scattered members and move forward as a community?

Shepherd us, O Lord, as we wake each
new morning, faced with the burdens of a
hard pilgrimage we would not have chosen.
But as this is now our path, let us walk it in
faith, and let us walk it bravely, knowing
that you go always before us.

We gathered together in a borrowed space, displaced worshippers, still longing for home, but also aware of others who suffered losses much greater than our own. We began to realize our spiritual home was still with us, made up of all the members of our faith family. Our home was never the building, “it was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.”^[ii]

We cannot go back to what was.

To live as humans, it seems, is a continual search for home. We see glimpses, hazy visions of the wonder of a place to which we belong and where we are made whole. We do our best to create these places with those we love, yet always carry the ache for our eventual home.

Let our rebuilding be a
declaration that a day will come when
all good things are permanent, when
disaster and decay will have no place,
when dwellings will stand forever, and
when no more lives will be disrupted by
death, tragedy, reversal, or loss.

Lord, have mercy.

---

^[i] Douglas Kaine McKelvey, A Liturgy for Those Who Suffer Loss from Fire, Flood, or Storm, Every Moment Holy, Rabbit Room Press 2017. USED WITH PERMISSION

^[ii] ― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

^[iii] ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Article in its original form first published at Alliance Connection magazine, Fall 2021