I see rare rays of hope. This morning I joined some friends as they opened the doors to a brand new church

I see rare rays of hope. This morning I joined some friends as they opened the doors to a brand new church. www.ncpchurch.com/

This was a project six years in the making and it greatly stressed the congregation, I’m sure. The old church was located below a sandwich shop. It didn’t diminish anyone’s faith from what I can see and it didn’t diminish their faith when they lost the lease on the basement church and spent several weeks as a wandering congregation.

The payoff was today. You can’t measure joy with a protractor or yardstick or plumb-bob yet you can surely feel it when it bathes you. The “glow”, if you will, of a shared task completed.

I’m a Catholic and as such abstain from communion at Protestant churches, however. Today as I abstained and passed the trays to my left I believed I could detect a sweet and powerful aroma. The air, perhaps, of the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost in Reformed Presbyterian usage, passing over the congregation?

Hope isn’t in short supply when it comes to our faith. For Christians it’s a promise and in the case of these Presbyterians, it’s a cornerstone of the New Covenant. I don’t fear for Christianity even if a great many young people never walk through church doors.

As they gray they’ll find their way. Even if droves never make it and invest their futures in pop culture, the worship of roots and science fiction notions of a great spirit I’m confident there are going to be people still maintaining ancient Judeo-Christian covenants.

What I’m not so hopeful about is the future of my country. As the pastor of a neighboring and also Reformed Presbyterian congregation reminded me the other day, nations come and go.