What Two Hot Dogs and Faith Can Do...

I can't remember if it was two or three years ago, but I do remember I had a LOT of time off because construction died, so I built a church for our Mission. This picture was our first Pascha in our completed building.  It seemed the hand of God was blessing us.  Of course He would bless us. We were stepping out on faith. We gave sacrificially and then some. We endured all manners of setbacks and speedbumps and didn't give up. In the end we had built an Orthodox temple and had a solid core of faithful families. The whole story is HERE

I used to read the last line of that post now with a bit of ironic bitterness.  About two years after we built the Church the owner sold the property out from under us.  It would be easy to blame the owner (and we did for a while), but looking back, the reality is it was a harmonic convergence of bad decisions and gross negligence and just plain human failures by our Bishop, Dean of Missions, Priest, Parish Council and members at large (of which I was an integral part).  QT (a gas station/convenience market chain) had bought the property and we were forced to vacate.

This was the fate of thousands of dollars and hundreds of man hours of volunteer labor, all given "to the glory of God". 

The fate of St. John's building is a metaphor for life, of course.  "Why does God not seem to honor the sacrifices that people make for Him?"  WE think we're building a legacy to the glory of God then that same "God" permits it to be bulldozed and buried so the future generations we were hoping to bless cannot even recognize it nor remember it.

And of course the answer to that  question is, "Who knows?"  Our call is to be faithful, not prognosticators or soothsayers interpreting and discerning the will of God.

So today (Sunday) I finished my weekend construction job about one o'clock. I went to the new commercial office space our Mission just rented and decided I'd get a jump start on the remodeling.

I "kept the fast" even though I didn't go to Church because I had to finish the job this weekend.  By noon I was shaky. (I'm standing on the blog streetcorner, yes...) There was no way I was going to do demolition for the rest of the day on a "BLT without the B".  I stopped and ate two hot dogs at Circle K and went to the new office space St. John's rented.  There's a few walls that have to be removed to open it up for a sanctuary.  These were the first two that had to go.

It is office space, nothing fancy. There will be no dome, no arches, no park-like grounds for picnics and barbeques, just an asphalt parking lot in a non-descript office building on a main street.  But St. John's Mission will be there, just like we were in someone's living room, the funeral home chapel, the strip center behind the bar, the beautiful temple and the rented Coptic Church Chapel we've been in for the last year. 

The Mission has survived seven years of clerical delusion, neglect, abuse, and lay and clerical dysfunctional leadership.  But it still exists in spite of all of the issues and problems.  In the end there was no schism, everyone who left has returned and is looking forward.  That in itself is a miracle.

Moving to a commercial office space from a "real church building" may be a step backward by all measures of "progress", but a step forward by all measures of "faithfulness in the small things" by a community of people that love each other enough to wander in the wilderness together and endure the humanity of the Church and the severity of the hand of God that is preparing us for something we do not understand and cannot comprehend.

And yes, it has occurred to me that even the last line of this post will probably come back and bite me too.  Oh well. What else is new.