Choruses, Chaos & Eulogy

12/8/2019 (The above picture is the same yard space as the old one, but 2 years later in full bloom.)

My childhood was filled with church-i-ness. I can’t remember ever purposely not going to church if there was a church service going on. And a common thing for us to do was to sing what was known as “choruses.” We had special children’s hymnals, seemingly always called “Youth Chorus #10,” or #12, or something. I had some favorites, some I didn’t like to sing (I don’t remember why) and some we didn’t sing, probably because the doctrine disagreed with my dad’s. One which I remember and liked to sing is copied below. This morning about 4AM, this was the SIMH. And a pleasant one it is!

Christ for me,

Yes, it’s Christ for me!

He’s my Savior, my Lord and King,

I’m so happy I shout and sing!

Christ for me,

Yes, it’s Christ for me!

Every day as I go my way,

It is Christ for me!     

(written by Alex Burns, 1923, a Scotsman, lately come to America.)

Many of those choruses would involve hand gestures and the acting out motions to describe the words. “Deep & Wide” comes to mind, and “Jacob’s Ladder,” “I’m in The Lord’s Army,” and some others. I think it was an attempt to give kids an outlet for some energy overload or perhaps, an energizer if we were about to fall asleep on the preacher—one way or the other! Since about 1980, or so, I haven’t heard very many of the old choruses. I guess they are passe`. 

A very momentous week is before me, I think. Should say “us” because it certainly involves everyone around me. This is the final week our Alkaline Water store will be in the present location. This happens to be the 61st month of doing business in this building, but it has been sold, as you might have read in previous blogs, and we are forced to move. So Friday, by 6pm or so, this store will be empty. Problem: the new store isn’t ready for occupancy. Sigh. We don’t yet know when we can expect to get into our new place. We know it’s going to be terrific for all the right parameters: the location is more “prime” to our town and to our clientele. It also has more parking and accessibility. And space! We have some good, usable space! 

But, what all this boils down to is work, it will be a long week of work. We have to stay open, but move at the same time. We need the things we need to be open while we move everything about being open — pretty sure that makes no sense. We’ll accomplish this, I’m sure, but not so sure we can keep our cool and satisfy every person who comes by for water. Friday, I connected a 3rd tank so as to produce more water than we’re used to having. So we are starting today with about 400 gallons. As the week goes on, however, we’ll only refill at the capacity of around 190 gallons per day, so we’ll easily be running out of water late in the days the closer we get to Friday. Gonna be fun! (Last week, the last 3 days we closed early to give the old system some extra time to recover, only to sell out again the next day.)

I’m hoping to get by the new landlord’s office to see if we can estimate the reopening with any degree of accuracy. It sure would be nice to definitely tell people when they can come again for water. This is the frustrating part. We had tentative plans to do all this sometime next year, but got forced into it by the present landlord’s peculiar situation. There’s no “blame to lay” but it still isn’t what is best since we have to be closed for a while.

An old friend passed away Saturday. A childhood friend and a whole life family friend. Buddy Cave was 3 years younger than I, but our families attended the same churches off and on for most of our growing up years. In early adulthood, Buddy began to preach, but better than that, he began to study his bible with little or no preconceived notions. He saw many of the same things I saw when I began to study. As a result of that, though we never became close “preacher friends,” we did know we agreed somewhat different doctrines than we grew up hearing. Buddy had some chronic health problems hit him at a relatively early age, and with other reasons untold, he stopped pastoring churches. He did remain active in an organized denomination. 

You may remember me writing about the THS Alumni banquet back in May of this year. Buddy Cave was there and we had a good, but short chat and since the Alumni always want 3 prayers during the evening, I asked Buddy to Dismiss us with prayer. He prayed beautifully, about the evening, the fellowship, our dependence on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation and promised Him we’d remember to give Him the glory in all things. Now that Buddy has passed away, I’m so glad to have that recent memory.

Thanks for reading, the Elder