I walked down the narrow street with Olaf at my side pointing out historic places in the small village. The streets were only wide enough for a single small car at a time. All of the houses were two or three stories high covered in a grey slate stone siding with a lime green trim, which Olaf says is the historic custom of the village. Many of the homes have a storefront on the street level with residents above. Just like back home, many of the main street stores were empty with a ‘for sale’ or ‘for rent’ sign in the window. Somewhere outside of the village was a new big box store that had taken the place of much of the village center.
We rounded a corner and before us stood on a hill in the center of the village the church Olaf and his wife serve as pastors. The exterior was all large stones with a black tint due to age. There were stone steps leading up to large wooden door held in place by hand forged metal hinges forming decorative patterns one the wood that looked like vines holding a reshaped tree guarding a secret place. As I stood there gazing up at the roughly four-story tower of a church I could just see the age. Before me stood a church that had been standing here for over a hundred years before Oshkosh was even a place, let alone an event destination.
We walked inside and the ancient wooden floor creaked with aged warmth beneath our steps. The pews were steep backed, wooded and looked half the age of the church. Olaf turned to me and said he would love to replace the pews with chair and right now he is in a window of opportunity where it could happen. The pews were over ninety years old so people would be okay with letting go of them and they were not quite a hundred years old where the historical society could step in and block any change. I laughed, what a dilemma to have to deal with.
The walls were all white which accentuated the beautiful woodwork. The lights were newer and modern looking but fit the architecture. Olaf said the historical society had to approve them because of the age of the old lights. A balcony ran around the room on three walls about a story and a half above the main floor and rising up to what would be the height of a third floor. On the wall where there was no balcony a long narrow, beautifully adorned, hand carved wooden platform with waist high walls jutted out about ten feet with a roof over it and a pulpit at the end closest to the center of the room. Above the platform, sat the pipe organ, which climbed the rest of the way up the wall toward the ceiling above. The organist had to climb up narrow stairs to the equivalence of the third floor to play the instrument.
Olaf wanted me to experience the pulpit so he took me into a back room, up narrow winding stairs in hallways where I had to duck my head until we reached a small door behind the wooden walkway. He opened it and invited me to step out into the pulpit. I stepped out cautiously, fearing the age of the wood and my weight. My hair brushed the ceiling as I walked out to the pulpit at the end of the walkway. I placed my hands on each side of the pulpit and looked out. In front of me, hanging from the ceiling was the Christ candle, to my left, right and across from me on the far side of the Christ candle were twelve paintings forming a sort of circle that I completed while standing in the pulpit. The paintings were the first apostles. So to stand in the pulpit of the church Olaf serves is to stand in the circle of the apostles and look into the Christ candle as one preaches God’s word to the faithfully gathered. How awesome and intimidating both at the same time!
I was humbled and in that moment I was reminded of how big God is and how much God cares about the little things such as my day-to-day struggles in my life. We are each a thread in a beautiful and diverse tapestry that God is weaving and would look good in both Olaf’s church and our church. Praise be to God!
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