The Waiting Room

The Waiting Room ----------------------------------------------------
Sunday the brown eyed girl and I, along with our son Patrick and his sweet family, went to the homecoming at Morrison’s Creek Church of Christ in Jackson County, Tennessee. It was the eighth such event and it was an overcast day with lots of rain in the forecast. Since it has only been two weeks since the flood of the century hit Middle Tennessee, most of us are still a little skittish when the dark clouds descend, the lightening flashes and the thunder rolls. The river road had been closed twice during the flood and the creek had been out of banks as was obvious by the driftwood washed up on the roadside. Still 129 brave souls showed up to worship together in a style reminiscent of a hundred years ago in a little brick building that has neither indoor toilet nor running water. Quite a crowd for a congregation that usually has 18 to 20 in attendance.
My cousin Roy at age 85 was in charge of the worship service and he simply called on those who were to participate in leading the worship. As the singing started, he moved silently around the room and whispered in your ear that you would be called on for prayer or to serve at the Lord’s table. Three songs, a prayer, two songs, the Lord’s Supper, a song, preaching, an invitation song, announcements and dismissal. No confusion, no surprises, just people doing what they had done for a lifetime – raising their voices to God and worshiping Him while encouraging each other to “walk worthy of their calling.”
Afterwards, plenty of fried chicken and banana pudding under the tent outside, served up with an abundance of love and good will towards one another and our Creator. Not much different than what I can remember from my childhood, except that cars were parked where mule and wagons were tied long ago, and we didn’t carry the homemade benches outside and turn them together to create a table to hold the “dinner on the ground.”
At 2:30 in the afternoon several of us gathered under the shelter of Gwen Lynn’s carport, just down from the old family cemetery and spoke of the reason for gathering together. It was to remember those who had gone before us and lay waiting in the cemetery.
The folks in this little family cemetery were not famous, they were not celebrities, and I am certain that most of the world did not long remember them, but we know something of them and that for which they stood. Over in one corner rested Abner and Elizabeth Chaffin who had purchased this home-place farm in 1858 and moved to their new home around Christmas that same year. It was a good sturdy yellow poplar log house but in 1869 Abner had become the first recorded resident of the cemetery. Over in that corner was Bailey Peyton McClellan, brother-in-law to Abner who had joined the Confederate Army in 1861 and having served out his year of enlistment had simply walked away in 1862 and returned home to tend to his farm, his family, and his own business. According to the army records, he deserted but in his own mind he had fulfilled his commitment and had a family that needed care.
My grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandparents lie in this little plot of ground adjacent to the, now falling down, house in which I was born on the kitchen table. They were honest hard working folks who forged a life and a living out of a wilderness. Most importantly they are family, and to those of us standing around sheltered from the rain, they are our people and this is our place. There is something compelling about roots and we are fortunate that ours run deep. We are planted with our toes deep in this soil just like the big sycamore trees down by the river.
When those who lie in this plot died, those who could afford it carved the names of their children, their brothers and sisters, or their parents in stone and went back to their daily life – coming here periodically to tend these graves, to clean them and to put flowers on them. Oh, I suspect they knew that only the mortal dust lingered in this spot but they did it out of respect, as a way of saying, I remember that you were, I know you existed and I am thankful for the part you played in my own life.
Sunday, 141 years after Abner was lowered into his final resting place, we came one more time – because our roots compelled us; because we realized that these people who lay around us played an important role in shaping our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents, and through this linage, ultimately in shaping us. By our presence and our actions we say, “thank you.”
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that "For as in Adam all die, thus also in Christ all shall be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:22).
Therefore, this cemetery is not just a place of rest, but it is also a place of expectation, a kind of waiting room for those who trust that God will open these graves and waken these dead, and they, having been found faithful, will have nothing to fear from God’s judgment.
In a letter to the church at Corinth, the apostle Paul says, “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. 1 Corinthians 15: 51-53
Yes, it was a good day of remembering, of worshiping, of reflecting on the brevity of our own lives, and of resolve to “walk worthy of that to which we were called.”
Have a blessed day and visit us at Maple Hill, a church of Christ in Lebanon, Tennessee. Bob