By Traci Rhoades
While it’s true what they say, that time does not stand still, I’ve come to understand it also doesn’t sit still.
What do I mean by that? Time has this ability to find us in a particular moment, the present, and yet transport us in our minds to any number of other moments.
We’ve been at a new church for almost a year now. It’s an entirely different church tradition, so there is a lot of new. For the most part, the new-to-me practices (that are actually ancient) are a welcome change.
Occasionally, though, we do something so familiar to my psyche, I’m reminded of the churches in my past who loved us well. I’ve taken to considering these moments as an invitation. I can take the before-me on this journey too. Jesus, after all, is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). We’re still traveling together.
One obvious example of these familiar practices is the Lord’s Prayer. In my new tradition, we say this every time we gather. The ending I’m familiar with, “for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever,” is separated from the words of the prayer we find in scripture.
Either way, it’s easy for me to imagine myself standing among the saints, praying as Jesus taught us to pray - even the ones I won’t see until someday in glory. At the same time, I’m also taken back to the Baptist church in my hometown, the one we never attended as a family, but where I participated in Bible drills, starting around age 11.
The Lord’s Prayer was one of several scripture passages we committed to memory. In practice and at competitions, we would stand in a line. When we heard the subtitle of a passage of scripture, we’d turn in our Bibles to that passage, place our index finger on it, and step forward. A call person would choose one of us to recount the passage, and identify where it could be found. Since a young age, I’ve known this prayer could be found in Matthew 6, part of the Sermon on the Mount.
We didn’t pray the Lord’s Prayer every week in the churches of my childhood, but I don’t recall a time I didn’t know those words, and eventually, where to find them in the Bible, in ten seconds or less.
This prayer of Jesus transcends time for many of us. I’ve shared one memory, but know there are dozens of other times in my life I have prayed and studied the Lord’s Prayer. Now, when we join the congregation in praying it every Sunday, all kinds of different memories just pop up.
I’m thankful to be in a tradition that’s taken me back to using a hymn book and traditional music. I listen to contemporary worship in the car radio sometimes, but it’s the hymns that have always felt the most worshipful to me personally. I’ve started a playlist with the ones I’m finding particularly meaningful. Mostly, I’m just glad to hold a hymn book again.
Before we begin on a Sunday morning, I sit in the pew and use ribbons to mark the songs we’ll sing in the service. They’re listed on a wooden board at the front of the sanctuary. This Sunday ritual takes me back to circa 1985, to that white wooden church in rural Missouri.
Not always, but every once in a while, we sing a hymn that’s a portal for my spirit. Last Sunday, I came across these familiar lyrics I know almost as well as the Lord’s Prayer: “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” and “Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.”
I don’t recall a time when I didn’t know this song. As we began singing, in my mind, I went back to the Easters of my childhood, wearing a floral dress, white frilly socks with white patent shoes. If I spun around fast, the skirt of my dress would flare out.
The African-American spiritual “Were You There” is not attributed to one specific author. It emerged from a communal slave experience. I imagine talking to someone around the time this hymn was first printed in a hymnal, in 1899. If asked how they knew this song, or who taught it to them, would time refuse to sit still for them as well? Would they attest to always knowing it, before a memory of learning the song even formed?
Could it be, possibly, some songs and some prayers are almost found in our DNA? Does some part of our spiritual self remember the ancestors, the saints, who voiced the words before us?
After a decade of exploring the various church traditions of Christianity, some things I learn leave me feeling like a complete beginner. Other things transcend our doctrinal differences, drawing us together. The fabric of my own faith looks more and more like a patchwork quilt all the time, and this season is adding a lot of red, green, and purple (I’m looking at you, liturgical colors) to it.
There are some worn patches, too, and they fit in rather nicely. The Lord’s Prayer, the hymns, the wooden church sign, for starters.
I stand in a long line of faithful followers of Jesus Christ, wrapped in a patchwork quilt of patches of my making, praying and singing my way home.
—————
Traci Rhoades is an author and Bible teacher who lives with her husband and daughter in West Michigan.
While it’s true what they say, that time does not stand still, I’ve come to understand it also doesn’t sit still.
What do I mean by that? Time has this ability to find us in a particular moment, the present, and yet transport us in our minds to any number of other moments.
We’ve been at a new church for almost a year now. It’s an entirely different church tradition, so there is a lot of new. For the most part, the new-to-me practices (that are actually ancient) are a welcome change.
Occasionally, though, we do something so familiar to my psyche, I’m reminded of the churches in my past who loved us well. I’ve taken to considering these moments as an invitation. I can take the before-me on this journey too. Jesus, after all, is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). We’re still traveling together.
One obvious example of these familiar practices is the Lord’s Prayer. In my new tradition, we say this every time we gather. The ending I’m familiar with, “for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever,” is separated from the words of the prayer we find in scripture.
Either way, it’s easy for me to imagine myself standing among the saints, praying as Jesus taught us to pray - even the ones I won’t see until someday in glory. At the same time, I’m also taken back to the Baptist church in my hometown, the one we never attended as a family, but where I participated in Bible drills, starting around age 11.
The Lord’s Prayer was one of several scripture passages we committed to memory. In practice and at competitions, we would stand in a line. When we heard the subtitle of a passage of scripture, we’d turn in our Bibles to that passage, place our index finger on it, and step forward. A call person would choose one of us to recount the passage, and identify where it could be found. Since a young age, I’ve known this prayer could be found in Matthew 6, part of the Sermon on the Mount.
We didn’t pray the Lord’s Prayer every week in the churches of my childhood, but I don’t recall a time I didn’t know those words, and eventually, where to find them in the Bible, in ten seconds or less.
This prayer of Jesus transcends time for many of us. I’ve shared one memory, but know there are dozens of other times in my life I have prayed and studied the Lord’s Prayer. Now, when we join the congregation in praying it every Sunday, all kinds of different memories just pop up.
I’m thankful to be in a tradition that’s taken me back to using a hymn book and traditional music. I listen to contemporary worship in the car radio sometimes, but it’s the hymns that have always felt the most worshipful to me personally. I’ve started a playlist with the ones I’m finding particularly meaningful. Mostly, I’m just glad to hold a hymn book again.
Before we begin on a Sunday morning, I sit in the pew and use ribbons to mark the songs we’ll sing in the service. They’re listed on a wooden board at the front of the sanctuary. This Sunday ritual takes me back to circa 1985, to that white wooden church in rural Missouri.
Not always, but every once in a while, we sing a hymn that’s a portal for my spirit. Last Sunday, I came across these familiar lyrics I know almost as well as the Lord’s Prayer: “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” and “Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.”
I don’t recall a time when I didn’t know this song. As we began singing, in my mind, I went back to the Easters of my childhood, wearing a floral dress, white frilly socks with white patent shoes. If I spun around fast, the skirt of my dress would flare out.
The African-American spiritual “Were You There” is not attributed to one specific author. It emerged from a communal slave experience. I imagine talking to someone around the time this hymn was first printed in a hymnal, in 1899. If asked how they knew this song, or who taught it to them, would time refuse to sit still for them as well? Would they attest to always knowing it, before a memory of learning the song even formed?
Could it be, possibly, some songs and some prayers are almost found in our DNA? Does some part of our spiritual self remember the ancestors, the saints, who voiced the words before us?
After a decade of exploring the various church traditions of Christianity, some things I learn leave me feeling like a complete beginner. Other things transcend our doctrinal differences, drawing us together. The fabric of my own faith looks more and more like a patchwork quilt all the time, and this season is adding a lot of red, green, and purple (I’m looking at you, liturgical colors) to it.
There are some worn patches, too, and they fit in rather nicely. The Lord’s Prayer, the hymns, the wooden church sign, for starters.
I stand in a long line of faithful followers of Jesus Christ, wrapped in a patchwork quilt of patches of my making, praying and singing my way home.
—————
Traci Rhoades is an author and Bible teacher who lives with her husband and daughter in West Michigan.
