Pillars of Faith In Our Church Community

Anne’s Story

A Place Prepared

In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there you may be also.   – John 14: 2-3

It was the chimes, you see. On weekdays, I listened from across the street as beautiful chimes would sound out, coming from the belfry of the big white church (I found out later that the pastor’s wife, Mrs. Bursey was practicing, but it sounded perfect to me.)  I’d be on my way home, well, to the place that my mother, my two sisters and brothers and I were staying—with my mom’s friend (and her six kids!).My parents had split apart; most everything seemed to have split right along with our family. 

But the chimes rang with something more hopeful to me. I noticed that on Sunday mornings the doors to the white church – the Bristol Federated Church – and people went inside, and seemed to come out a bit happier. 

After a couple  of weeks, I took my eleven year-old self in through those doors, sat and listened for an hour, and I came out happier too. I attended, without saying a word to anyone, sitting in a pew, following along in the hymnal blissfully, until one Sunday morning in the fall, I went inside and saw—children! Kids from my class at school, sitting in the choir loft. I froze in my place, too embarrassed to get up and just leave. Sunday School, which was held in the hour before church in those ancient times, was in session. It was the Sunday when clocks had been turned back, making me early for church, but right on time to find the place that was prepared for me; even daylight savings time was called into action, and Grace Billings as teacher of the sixth grade, was delivering the invitation: “Would you like to join us?”

I think I might have nodded, but I know I got up, went forward. In so many ways, I have kept going forward in faith since that day. Supported and nurtured by Bristol Federated family, in the company of, and with instruction and inspiration from an array of folks who, I will freely admit, have a glow that resembles a halo around their heads – Grace Billings, Marian Palmer, Viola Morrison, Lottie Follansbee, Charlotte Nelson, Phyllis Pitkin, Mary Peabody, Alice Lauritsen, Betty Hanson, Iloene Brennan, and on to the present – Brenda Lathrop, Leslie Leggett, Ginny Prescott, Donna Gile.

The place was prepared, you see. God prepared it then, and set others in motion, to lead me, to help me find and live out that connection, to “grow in grace”, and to help others to find a place as well. The faith and family I have found within the Bristol Federated Church, its spirit, make it my own place, a place prepared through God’s providential care for me, and through Jesus’ boundless love. Praise be to God, for His unspeakable gifts.