I was heading to Kate’s house in the early years of our relationship. It was around this time of year. A gloomy evening much like the first few days of last week were. Misty, cold, and grey. I was passing out of Bolivar, Ohio, and I remember seeing this red farmhouse all lit up and homey.

It had a big picture window with a lamp right in the center. That house has been a mile marker ever since. It is one of the last houses before you get 3 miles of nothing. I loved passing it on the 43 miles it took to get to Kate’s house. It stood out. I would wonder who lived there. Who built it. What stories could it tell.

I just felt like it was an archetypal home, like one a kindergartner would draw. Sometimes I would imagine owning a house like that with Kate. We’d fill it with dreams and kids and art. I was wistful. I’m sure there’s a German word for the feeling I had, this nostalgia for the future.

Time has not been kind to that home. Sometime when Kate and I were moving around the country, it fell into disrepair, and now it is abandoned. The windows are punched out and empty. The once-stately trees that framed the home are overgrown and crowding the house. The porch roof has fallen in.

Time is on my mind a lot these days. I can’t believe that this is the last Sunday in October. I wait all year for this, my holy month. A year that has been creeping by. Days feel like weeks and weeks feel like months. But not this month. As I reflect on the strange nature of time, I wonder what time felt like for Noah and his family.

Noah waited for God to remember him and his floating zoo. He took time to make sure it was okay to leave the ark. The rabbis point out that Noah seemed reluctant to leave the ark. Elie Wiesel, the great writer, calls Noah the first “survivor.” The world had experienced a Holocaust, and Noah was reluctant to walk out of the ark because he knew that the entire world was one giant graveyard for all the people he had known–and he just couldn’t face it.[1] Noah took his time leaving the ark. He made sure it was absolutely safe, and once he left the ark, Noah didn’t come back.

How long did it take for the ark to fall into a state of disrepair? Did some young man, generations later, while walking to his girlfriend’s house pass it and use it as a half-way marker? Did he wonder what a boat was doing on top of a mountain? Who built it? What stories could it tell? Did he dream of his own time in a ship, seized by some future-nostalgia?

Time is a nonrenewable resource. It only goes one way. Time is relative and subjective. Sometimes hours can fly by like seconds and sometimes seconds can tick by like hours. Time is weird. And I’m struck by it.

In the flood of COVID-19 that we find ourselves in, time is a weird thing. We never had this much time together as a family. I’m at once, really thankful for it and also we’re trying not to get sick of one another. We are trying to do new things. Get outside while we still can. I wonder if Noah did that with his family. They were thankful that they weren’t outside the ark in the flood and yet yearned to be anywhere but there.

Growing up, I remember the tabloid headlines about folks finding or searching for Noah’s ark. Now, I laugh that I ever fell for such a headline. It was made of wood. We won’t find it—it fell in and deteriorated. Just like all the sooner wagons of the cowboy days. Just like that Bolivar house.

Time is weird. Maybe on our next trip down to my mom’s, we might stop by that abandoned house and wonder about it. One day, it will be gone. I guess the fleeting nature of everything should be honored and treasured. We’re all fleeting.

I don’t regret an hour of time spent at church. Spent with you in worship, fellowship, at coffee hour. I treasure our time together. I look forward to spending more time together. In mission. In talking together. As weird and hard as this year as been, let’s not waste our time wishing for it to be over. For one day we’ll look back and miss it. Our nerves are fraying and we’re tried of being vigilant and masking and distancing and such. We do these things not just to stop the spread, but because we love our neighbor. And that’s hard.

It is as Fredrick Backman writes, “It’s hard to care about people. Exhausting, in fact, because empathy is a complicated thing. It requires us to accept that everyone else’s lives are also going on the whole time. We have no pause button for when everything gets too much for us to deal with, but then neither does anyone else.”[2]

I would rather live an exhausting life of empathy than a life that is just passing the time. No real connection. Sure, I’ll be rested but my days won’t have the heft and the depth that they do now. That’s what caused Noah’s flood in the first place: people living without treasuring their neighbor. Their time. They just did whatever they wanted, and life was wicked and miserable. Counter to God’s vision.

Noah built the ark, but the ark wasn’t the point. The point was that life would continue and be closer to God’s vision of how life could be. Deeper. Fuller. Treasuring the time.

I don’t lament that the ark is gone. I don’t lament that the house in Bolivar is falling down. I give thanks that it makes me think of Kate. Reminds me of time on the road when I was younger. When I pass it now, it gives me a sense of how much time has passed. How much we have invested in our relationship. How far we have come. And I am grateful.

I am grateful for how much we have invested in one another as a church. We have covered many miles. We have shown up for one another. We are building together, even among the flood and fraying nerves. We will hold fast. We will hold fast and build knowing that our building, while historic and beautiful, isn’t the point. The point is our time together. Time learning one another’s stories. Connecting. Learning together just who our neighbor is and how to welcome, love, and serve them.

We have many teams here to help us come together with purpose. Our Caring Team is about hosting one another. Putting on social events in the life of our church to let the stories flow. Our Evangelism Team is focused on inviting others to add their lives and stories to our story. Property and Grounds is about caring for our church building and property. The Stewardship and Finance Teams are about the stewardship of the money gifted to us for the benefit of our staff and for future generations. Worship is about instilling meaning and facilitating an experience of the divine across our three services and beyond! Mission is about loving and serving our neighbor in love. The Discipleship and Education Team focuses on passing down our sacred stories to the next generation.

And if none of those teams sound enticing, we are a permission-giving church. We’ll embark on new ideas together. We’ll set sail and try something out. It might just get us through a flood! And one day, it might collapse into disrepair. That’s okay. It served its purpose, and it’s okay to leave it. The point isn’t the thing itself, it’s about the time spent together and the love that was discovered.

Love that was in the ark with Noah. Love that was in a now abandoned house.[3] The love that is in this place and among we the church. So take the time, my future dead people. Time is fleeting and passing whether you take it or not. Might as well treasure it and enjoy the company. Take the time to write a card, join a team, or try to make a dream a reality. Create something that someone might be inspired by, if only in passing. Someone took the time to create all of this: all the art, music, literature, that we love. They took the time. They didn’t have a pause button. No one does. They took the time, and so can we. Thanks be to God.

Works Cited

^[1][1] https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/lessons-of-the-flood/

^[2][2] Us vs. You. Quote found on GoodReads.com https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/56772779-vi-mot-er-bj-rnstad-2

[3] You can take a look at the Google Street view of the house here: https://tinyurl.com/y486uwwo