Memory Lane.

When I was a kid, we lived outside of Hopkins, MI. It was and still is officially the "boonies" , "the sticks", whatever slang you want to use to describe the very rural country in which my parents made a home for us.

Just recently I took a little road trip back to where I lived and to Allegan where we went to church. It was a small church named Millgrove Christian Reformed. When I arrived there, I was saddened to see that the building was no longer being used for a church. It appeared as if it was no longer being used for anything. I had many feelings welling up inside. I could just picture myself as a 7 year old running up and down the steps to the entrance, or walking up to the front of the sanctuary after church to dip my fingers in the wax from the candles. I started to wonder how a church could just no longer exist? I thought about all the people I had known there, what are they doing now? Where did their lives take them, do they still walk with the Lord? How does a church community just dissolve?

My family went to Millgrove for about 10 years. I was baptized there, it was likely in that building that I first learned of Jesus Christ and gave my life to Him. How could it be that this is now just an abandoned building?

I am trying to decide just what to make of it all. Dan said I am having a "pre-mid-life crisis" and that is why I am getting all nostalgic. Maybe. I guess it is good sometimes to see where one's roots are, spiritually speaking. I realized that the same God that was in that church 20 years ago hasn't scattered like it's members. He is with them still, including my parents, my siblings and me. The seed was planted, and it grew. The now defunct Millgrove CRC served a Godly purpose, one that I'm forever grateful for.