This is almost too good to be true, before they built this thing it had endured two earthquakes and a flood.
Could it be that choosing the name Phocas was entirely appropriate., it surely must be what the builders felt at the time.
Well, a few summers back, our newly renovated church, which was about to reopen in a week or so, burned down in the middle of the night (it turned out that the crew hired to stain the wood had left a pile of oily rags in a box, which led to spontaneous combustion).
As the pastor and one of the elders of the church looked on, a reporter approached them and asked them, someberly and seriously, what important spiritual message could be gleaned from this disaster. The elder look non-plussed for a moment, then answered, “Umm… that wood burns?”
That about sums it up, actually. Churches are buildings like any other, made with the same materials as any other building, and they’ll burn (or flood, or collapse, or blow away) like any other, given the right conditions. If you pick a bad place to build your church (or house, or restaurant, or mall) or build it badly, you probably shouldn’t expect God to protect it from the inevitable results.
Sheldon Church was burned during the Revolutionary War, rebuilt and then burned during the Civil War.
Does this remind anyone of that Far Side cartoon where the Crisis Clinic is about to be swept over the waterfall while on fire?
One of my personal faves, BTW–pretty well sums up my life some days!!