Shelburne faith column: Our world just keeps changing

I was just ten the first time I got to roam in Yellowstone. I thought it was heaven on earth. When I brought my own kids to that famous park almost three decades later, however, a cataclysmic earthquake had wiped out some of the wonders I had liked best of all.

Every time we have returned to Paris, France, Notre Dame has been high on my list of places to visit. Getting to worship one Sunday in that historic cathedral thrilled my soul. Then it burned. Although its shell survived, the church I remember is gone now. It hurts me just to think about it.

I spent most of my elementary and junior high school days in Kerrville, Texas. A lot of my hours there were spent in the small church that hosted my father’s preacher training school. Seventy years later, when my lady and I were roosting down there in a hill country timeshare, we drove by to see that church I grew up in, and it was not there. I think a beauty shop now occupies that corner lot. Another part of my world had evaporated.

In my home office where I am writing these words, my shelves and walls are loaded with pictures. Most of the people in them have left us: my parents and grandparents and my sister, or friends like Eddie Melin and Don Curphey or Winfred Moore or Guyon Saunders or Sister Olivia. All of them are still an important part of my world, but not like they used to be.