Live Worship Services with some COVID-19 precautions in place
Sundays at 11 AM
January 16 Worship Service Cancelled Due to Winter Storm.
January 9, "How Hard It Is to
Find an Honest Person"
First posted on January 17, 2021, Pastor John Wiederholt, preaching.
Re-run Season
We will continue to have live services on Sunday mornings. Eighteen months of videos are available in our Video Archive. For now, we will feature one of these re-runs on our home page every week. If there was a video you particularly liked or one you were sorry you missed you can find it in the Archive. Newsletters and the letter "To the Church Family" will continue every week.
We will continue to have live services on Sunday mornings. Eighteen months of videos are available in our Video Archive. For now, we will feature one of these re-runs on our home page every week. If there was a video you particularly liked or one you were sorry you missed you can find it in the Archive. Newsletters and the letter "To the Church Family" will continue every week.
To the Church Family
"Home Is Where the Heart Is"
January 16, 2022
By John Wiederholt, Pastor
My grandmother, the one who taught my every wise saying that was in vogue in the 1800’s when she was growing up, had a sampler in her house that said, “HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS.” She believed it, too. She and my grandfather lived in the same house for more than 75 years. They went through a lot of changes in that time and so did the property. The three large screen porches became actual rooms. The stable was eventually converted into a garage. The chicken house became a storage shed and so forth. But that little house was the focal point of the whole family’s life. In my childhood, relatives, including my family, came from more than a hundred miles away to celebrate Christmas.
Some of you are anchored to homes you have occupied for that long or longer, I think. It’s really amazing to me when I try to imagine it. My vocation has required a lot of moves to serve congregations in different places. My twenty years in our church’s manse comprise the longest period I have lived in one house in my life by a big margin. But I can look back on other homes that were special.
The first house I ever owned was in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It was tiny but had a fabulous floor to ceiling window in the living room where we could look out on waist high or higher snow drifts in the winter. When I lived in Lafayette, Louisiana, I built a wedge-shaped modern house, from scale drawings I made on a kitchen table. I subcontracted the work but did put down 900 sq. ft. of ceramic tile on the main floor by hand. I went from owning the most distinctive house in Lafayette to buying the most generic house in Richmond, Virginia, a classic four-bedrooms-upstairs, back-of-the-house-stairway Virginia classic. We didn’t tag it as “generic” because of the classic floor plan, but because the” decorating” when we moved in was entirely matte beige top to bottom. It was as though the whole house had been boiled in a giant kettle to remove every trace of individuality. Then, after a couple of short stops to do interims I came here. As I said, for twenty years I have called this church’s manse home. I am grateful for every year that I have been anchored here.
Jesus said with sadness that “the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” It is a sign to us of how deeply the Lord felt the anxiety and pain of the human condition. Homelessness is for us a burden no one wants to bear and our hearts go out to those who face it.
Kym and I have never felt homeless here in the church’s house. We have always been grateful for it. But we have not owned a house since selling Kym’s house in Raleigh and we have reached a point in our lives when we know I am not going to work forever even if I would really like to do so. We have reached a point when we need a home of our own. At the same time in the current real estate market, the church’s house is a valuable asset the sale of which might well preserve our church’s life for years through the current hard times. Therefore, I am happy to tell you that last week Kym and I completed the purchase of our own home in Collinsville.
For security reasons we are not saying any more about it in print or on the internet, but Kym will be in church on Sunday to tell you all about it. And, no, it doesn’t mean I have set a date for retirement.
Blessings,
John
Resources for Helping those Suffering Food Insecurity
Grace Network
City of Martinsville-Healthy Food Hub
Food Insecurity in Henry County
Many Hands Giving Food in Henry County
PCUSA – Hunger action Congregations
A letter from our partners at Grace Network, Martinsville/Henry County
A Sparkling Church
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