Good morning church family,
Just shy of the turn that would take him up the Stage Road and past the church, Sandin heard sirens wailing from behind. Easing the right-side tires onto the soft shoulder, Sandin looked in the rearview mirror and saw a Bolton town cop car kicking up dust and closing fast on his position; its blue strobes flashing wildly. A Bolton fire truck was not far behind it, roaring and rumbling as it came. Coming to a complete stop, Sandin watched the emergency vehicles blitz by. The speed of the fire truck shook his sedan as it whooshed past; the sound of its big diesel engine reverberating in his chest. A quick check again in the rearview mirror revealed a second fire truck several hundred yards back and coming at a quick pace. Sandin kept his foot on the brake and looked distractedly out the passenger-side window. There, just inside the tree line and only a few paces from the shoulder, stood a road sign. Untrimmed tree limbs and unchecked sumac and puckerbrush had threatened to completely obscure the sign from passing motorists. Attempting to peer through the foliage, Sandin leaned across the armrest. The metal sign post stood about seven-feet-tall with a little sign bolted to the top of it. Looking intently at the weathered block letters spaced neatly in three careful rows, Sandin was able to make it out. “BOLTON BIBLE CHURCH,” the sign read. Below the message was an arrow directing traffic and at the top of the sign a simple, white cross blazed the blue background.
“Hmm,” Sandin thought to himself. “I’ve never noticed that sign before.”
Sandin wasn’t from Connecticut. He’d grown up in Southern California and gone to college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He met a girl from Vermont while studying there and the two fell in love and were married not long after graduation. After a successful internship at Raytheon, he was offered a job in aerospace technology at one of their offices in Connecticut. Sandin and his wife settled in the town of Bolton; eventually buying a house and starting a family. They’d been there almost nine years now and they loved it. Growing up in church and having been baptized at an early age, Sandin’s faith had always been an important part of his life. Upon moving to Bolton, he began looking for a church before he’d even begun trying to get the power and cable TV turned on at the house. He and his wife had worshipped around for a bit before settling in at Bolton Bible Church.
Bolton Bible was a non-denominational, very Evangelical fellowship of conservative Christians. It was not a large group – maybe sixty or seventy souls in attendance on a good Sunday. But they were a wonderful family of earnest and loving believers who cared for each other and maintained a steadfast commitment to the Gospel. Bolton Bible was led by a quiet, well-spoken, and sincere pastor who spent the lion’s share of his time in his well-appointed study. The pastor did almost all of his socializing, counseling, teaching, and connecting from the pulpit on Sunday and the lectern on Wednesday night. Consequently, he was not well-known to his people but they revered him and were genuinely grateful to God for the blessing of such a studious and scholarly shepherd to watch over them.
The town of Bolton was well-settled and home to a population of highly educated, upwardly mobile, affluent New Englanders. It was a pretty leafy little town – mostly homes and neighborhoods. There wasn’t much by way of commerce and industry aside from a couple of nondescript office buildings and a shopping center set well-off of the road. The church building, which was a neat and elegant construction in the classical colonial style, fit in well. The church people did a good job keeping up the building and grounds and most townspeople regarded the church as affectionately as they did the big red barn and silo belonging to the only remaining farm in town. But as far as the unbelieving public was concerned, the church’s building wasn’t much more than a bit of civic décor and its members nothing but harmless stewards of a sentimental heritage.
As the second firetruck thundered by, Sandin checked his mirrors before climbing back up onto the pavement and taking the turn onto the Stage Road. As he drove past the church building, the pastor’s pickup was the lone car in the lot. Sandin thought some more about that sign back on Hammonasset Avenue. “It must have been important enough to someone,” he thought to himself, “to go to all the trouble of having that sign made and approved by the town and installed and all.” He drove a few hundred yards in silence; the quiet humming of his Audi’s engine the only soundtrack. “And now,” the uncomfortable line of thinking continued, “that sign must not be important to anyone.”
That Sunday at church, Sandin asked around about the sign. Many, like him, were unaware of its existence.
Jacob Lohr, one of the elders, knew all about it. “Oh yeah,” he began, folding his arms and putting one hand under his chin, “there’s actually three of ‘em – maybe only two now. There’s the one down there on Hammonasset and I know there’s one over on Cranston where it connects to Stage. The one that was back off the bypass; I think that one got taken out by a plow years ago. But anyway – yeah, we had those put up years ago when miss Evelyn Sylvester was still with us. She insisted on it. ‘Maybe no one will ever come because of them,’ she used to say, ‘but they won’t forget we’re here and it never hurts to see the cross.’” Elder Lohr dropped his arms and put his hands back in his pockets. “We sure had a devil of a time getting those things approved by the Bolton Town Board.”
Over the next couple of weeks, the shrouded church sign continued to bother Sandin. He’d become determined to do something about it. It wouldn’t take more than an hour’s worth of work to cut back the encroaching woods but he wanted to check in with the pastor before doing anything; just in case the project was booby trapped in some way that he couldn’t see. That Sunday he waited to talk to the pastor after the service and filled him in on the situation.
“So,” Sandin said, holding a blueberry muffin in one hand; his Bible tucked under one arm and his one-year-old girl cradled in the other, “what do you think? Any reason I can’t go down there and cut all that back and make our sign visible again?”
“No,” the pastor said, a keen earnestness in his countenance, “you most certainly can. There’s one long easement running the length of Hammonasset. But I’m not sure why you’d want people to see that sign in the first place.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that, Pastor,” Sandin said, a quizzical look on his face as he allowed his little girl to pick off another piece of muffin.
“Well, Sandin, all I mean to say is that I think we have some other trimming we ought to do first before we go directing anyone to come see any of us. I mean our witness and testimony as a people has gotten pretty overgrown with our own brush and weeds these days. That sign only directs people to a building and, as you know, buildings don’t say much.” The pastor looked out the window that offered a view out onto the Stage Road. “God’s made each and every one of us into a sign. And my goodness – we sure need to get our gospel showing again.”
We’re looking forward to gathering in God’s house tomorrow morning to share in fellowship with one another and in communion with Him. I’m so glad we’re all a part of the family of God and I’m so grateful for the blood of Jesus Christ that makes going home again possible. Praise the Lord for His goodness and mercy!!! May the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!
