One
of my favorite childhood Christmas traditions was our annual trek to small town Edgerton, Minnesota.
I
suppose every church or denomination of churches has instances of its own
customs or quirky lingo. In the PRC, one
of those customs is the recurring, celebratory, inter-church sing-alongs that
we call “singspirations.” I can still
hear some of my high school friends say, “You’re going to a what?
A sing-sper-what?”
Among
the PR churches in the Midwest, singspirations are organized by the young
people of each congregation, and each congregation has its own holiday
singspiration to host. The Christmas
singspiration has been held in the little white clapboard church building in
Edgerton for as long as I can remember.
And nothing short of all-out blizzard kept my parents from making the
hour-long trip north.
When
I was growing up, my parents drove a full-size, rust-colored 1972 Chevy
van. The van seated twelve, though there
were functioning seatbelts for maybe five or six. The bench seats were mismatched, and
cream-colored curtains hung in the windows.
The carpet was green shag, and the gas cap had been procured from a VW
somewhere along the way. If you sat on
the second bench seat, all the way in, you had a footrest: the box heater that
was capable of scorching the legs of those directly next to it and in front of
it while the rest of the van remained just above freezing.
When
we drove to the singspiration on those December Sunday evenings, we’d be
dressed in our church clothes. Christmas
dresses, if we had them, tights, and bulky coats with enormous fur-lined
hoods. We’d fight over the warm seats as
we piled in and snuggled under the afghans that Mom stowed in the van every
winter. I can remember bucking snowdrifts
already on our own gravel road, Dad muttering about the wisdom in going at all,
yet still we went. And all the way we’d
read with flashlights, look out the frosty windows at the stars, point out the
places whose farmers had braved the cold to string Christmas lights, and sing
carols.
When
we got to the little white church in Edgerton, we’d pile out of the van and
clatter our way downstairs to use the toilet before clacking our way back
upstairs and filing into one of the wooden bench seats. The singspiration itself was always a joy,
the pews packed, the Christmas carols, hymns and psalms accompanied by the
lusty pipe organ. Afterwards we’d click
our way back downstairs for cookies before braving the wintry night once more
for the drowsy drive home.
This
year, if the Lord wills, I might make it to Edgerton this coming Sunday evening
for the singspiration again. If we make
it, my husband and I will transport our own flashlight-reading, carol-singing
crew in our own Chevy van, with its able heater. Maybe.
We have miles to go and children that may need sleep before that will happen. But maybe.
Christmas
is a season that lends itself to sentimentality, isn’t it? And some of my musing about the Christmas
singspiration is sentimental. Some of
it, though, is my own way of recalling the years of the Most High, of communing
with my own heart and exclaiming, “Lord,
how good you are! How kind, and how
faithful you have been to me in my life!
Indeed, all of your promises in Jesus Christ are Yes! and Amen!”
The Christian faith is not
backward-reaching: it’s future-seeking.
It’s a faith that doesn’t dwell in the past but presses forward to our
glorious expected end. It’s my prayer
that as you look backward this Christmas season to the birth of our Savior,
you’ll do so longing for his second Advent, that great, final coming when he
will make all things new. Blessed
Christmas to you, friends.
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