It’s been an unusual start to the new year, here at First Baptist Church.
We started off by having to cancel our first services of the year, due to a bitterly cold winter storm being predicted. The Greene County Emergency Management Agency asked that all organizations, including churches, suspend their activities for that Sunday, January 5th. After conferring with one of our Trustees and our Chairman of Deacons, we decided it was probably good citizenship (and submission to a reasonable request from proper authorities; see Romans 13:1)to do as they asked.
So: no church on the first Sunday of the year! My wife said to me that afternoon: “This is kind of a strange parenthesis in our lives.” She was right.
For a couple of days after that, the church building felt like a ghost town. The State Police were still requesting people to limit unnecessary travel, so there were very few folks about. My footprints were the only ones leading up to and away from the church for two days. I normally like being at the church by myself (I can get a lot of things done), but this just felt eerily quiet. Too quiet.Read More