By Rev. Pete Hyde
We returned from the mountains on Friday after taking a much-needed break. The trip was filled with joys, adventures, cool weather (37 degrees one morning on the porch of the cabin), winding mountain roads, a touch of early fall color, bright sunshine, spending time with family, an accident between the shuttle bus we were on at the Atlanta airport and a car that tried to cut the bus off at an intersection, two hours on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a visit to the urgent care center in Boone, North Carolina for sinus infection that is now making its way through the other travelers, little out of the way restaurants like Shoo-Booty’s in Murphy, North Carolina, The Chicken Shack in Luverne, Alabama and Barney’s Café in Mt. Airy North Carolina (the town that inspired Mayberry in the Andy Griffith Show) for a piece of homemade coconut cream pie. Kay and I always try to take the back roads when we travel. There are always things to discover and inspire.
The narrow, two-lane road with no shoulder wound its way through the mountains with a guardrail protecting a several-hundred-foot drop on one side and a rock wall on the other. Up and down, around curves marked 25 mph signs that meant it, the strip of asphalt wandered through the woods. Every so often, there would be an intersection with another road winding its way somewhere. More often than not, there would be a church on the corner. Even where there was no intersection of paved roads, there would be a sign next to a dirt road leading up a hill or down a valley indicating a church was down that road somewhere. We would travel for miles without seeing a house or any sign of civilization, but there would be a church “back in there somewhere” ministering to those unseen inhabitants of the Blue Ridge Mountains. None of them were “mega churches” and none of them probably wanted to be. They were small bodies of Christ ministering to the needs of those specific people in those specific places, as are most of the churches in America.
In the midst of the grandeur of the mountains in the fall, when God’s handiwork and presence could not be mistaken or misunderstood, you know and feel that God is everywhere. Standing on an overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway on this particular day, you could see for 30 or 40 miles across the hills and valleys of God’s glorious creation. But the real statement of God’s presence is each of the little churches along the almost forgotten back roads, not only of the mountains, but much of the rural areas of our country. They do not have grand buildings and groomed campuses. They do not have the array of programs and ministries that many of us use to define a “successful” church. But they are the presence of God in every nook and cranny of our nation. They stand as witness to God’s seeking a relationship with His children no matter where they are. Their witness to the message and presence of God is as much a miracle as the sweeping landscapes and seascapes of God’s great creation.
It would be good for us to remember the next time we gather for worship in our beautiful buildings and comfortable pews and a myriad of programs of ministries from which to pick and choose, that our church was placed here to be the same witness to our community as the thousands of other churches across this land. If we would all do our best in the place where God planted us, we could change the world for the sake of His kingdom.
Rev. Pete Hyde serves as chaplain with the South Walton Fire District
