SCRIPTURE VERSES

           I hadn’t been at Camp Miami very long before the need arose to make a trip to Huber Hardware.  John Calhoun was the proprietor of the store and Henry Huber was the owner.  It would be fair to say that Henry wasn’t very interested in the business at that point in his life and 99% of whatever happened at Huber’s revolved around John.  The business was, in many ways, more a social club than a serious commercial endeavor.  Conversations covered topics about almost anything but John seemed to prefer talking about religion a good bit of the time.

John was Baptist and often tried to draw me into the discussion to see where and how United Methodists found common ground with Baptists and where the differences lay.  We had only been attending church for a couple years before we moved to camp.  John probably gave me credit for more knowledge than I had since the previous resident directors were ordained pastors, not a transplanted engineer.

One day while I was there he asked me what my favorite Bible verse was.  Being the smart-alec I am and without much thought, I said my favorite verse was “And it came to pass”.  A puzzled look came over his face and he commented that he wasn’t familiar with that verse.  “Why would someone pick that verse?” he asked.

Still stringing him along, I said that there were a lot of things in life that I was thankful were not here to stay forever.  Toothaches, for example, can’t pass soon enough.  Same thing with winter, for me.

Since that silly conversation some thirty years ago, I’ve often thought about that off the cuff answer.  Life is all about passages and passings.  The birth of Jesus came to pass and then, He passed away on the cross.  Quite a lot of people and things have passed through my life since then.  Some have been good and I wished they could have lasted forever.  Some, not so good, I was glad to see them gone.

Good or not so good, they have all influenced and educated me in ways that have brought me to a closer relationship with God.  Even though taken out of context, “And it came to pass” is used to start a paragraph three different times in Luke Chapter 1 before it is used at the beginning of Chapter 2 (KJV) to begin telling the Christmas story.  To get that much coverage, Luke must have thought passings had some importance.

I think that’s the (half) verse I’ll write on the floor of the new building.  The entire experience of moving from merger discussions to being just weeks away from moving in, has been filled with passings.