Tears and Laughter: The answer remains the same

I like old churches for reasons I can’t even explain to myself. Not just the old well maintained majestic white churches with tall steeples reaching toward heaven, but the old ones with sagging roofs and broken beams no longer able to support weight.

Nothing distracts me on road trips like abandoned churches. The ones where it has been a long, long time since a congregation filled the pews.

I saw one last week that looked as if the whole structure had dropped to its knees and bowed its head. This one, I thought, as many of them often do, seemed to accurately capture the current condition of religion in America today.

I will pull over at these old church sites and take pictures much to my children’s amusement. I guess I stop mostly for the feeling I get standing in front of what used to be. The kids can’t see the attraction yet, but I assure them that one day they will.

Churches are still valued today, but it seems they once played a more important role in communities. It was where everyone gathered to pray and to praise, but it was more than that. It was all some areas had, it was a hearth of hope and comfort where everyone was welcomed, a meeting place and safe haven.

Churches, and the grounds that surround them, have witnessed many young people wander down paths they were thought never to return from, only to see them come back time after time – often during a revival. Young boys who once drove too fast and cussed too much would become God fearing men with secure jobs who married inside the church one Saturday afternoon and raised children, rarely missing a Sunday year after year until one day their eulogy was read.

There are no eulogies for old churches. They just stand there silently with their memories of baptisms and blushing brides dashing down the front steps in white amidst a shower of rice and a crowd of family and friends.

Standing before them, it is as if the celebrations just one day stopped. It is as if time itself ceased to be. One Sunday the doors failed to open. The gospel was silent. There were no more dinners on the ground. No gingham tablecloths spread with fried chicken or treasures from gardens, or pound cake or watermelon. No children chasing one another, and the latest baby no longer being passed around.

But even in a state of disrepair, there is something holy about old abandoned churches. They have an energy that surrounds them like a hymn. It is an everlasting spirit we are still just as in touch with today. It is not bound to a building that is vulnerable to time and decay.

Besides, churches don’t ever go away, they just rebuild bigger and stronger usually not too far from where they started. They still dot the rural south and beyond. Anywhere you go, you will find churches.

And for all of life’s trials and sufferings, church is there for you. For any soul seeking comfort, for anyone groping for answers to life’s endless problems too prevalent in our country today, for anybody who just wants the tools to be happy…the answer is given every Sunday morning, any week of the year.

Amanda Walker is a columnist with The West Alabama Watchman, Al.com, The Thomasville Times, and The Wilcox Progressive Era. For more information, visit her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AmandaWalker.Columnist.