CityView Magazine

18 April 2021 FAITH It is good BY THE REV. KELLI W. TAYLOR I t wasn't early on the first day of the week, but rather on a Tuesday. Nevertheless, the dissonance hummed as, just as on the first Easter morning, commonplace ritual suddenly exploded into an extraordinary, profound moment the morning of March 20, 2018. at single moment had begun some three years prior with a vision for a chapel in a promised land located just on the other side of our Jordan, the Cape Fear River. In this chapel, all people would feel welcome, sense the spirit descending like a dove from its raers and see the goodness of God in its beauty. Above all, this chapel would be a dwelling place for love, the kind of consuming, sacrificial love of God demonstrated by Jesus on the cross. Hope was riding high, expectations grand. But from the first turn of dirt, vision met relentless challenge – wicked weather drowned building supplies, diminutive details became gargantuan conversations and this simple building of love hit some very complicated snags. Sound familiar? Whether dismayed disciples or capable contractors, who among us is not acquainted with a "two steps forward, three steps back " existence? Yet, persistence and hope are woven by the Creator into human DNA. So onward and upward, a magnificent chapel grew out of a modest pile of lumber and block. Like the first Holy Week, the seven days prior to that Tuesday were rife with suffering, persecution, death and disappointment, which brings me to the story of a man named David. David Brown was chosen to set the cross atop the chapel. Chosen in the way that Moses was chosen, David tried every way he could to pass off the job to someone else. Suddenly, the dark clouds opened and, like the first ray of light in Creation, as the flash that shown forth from the Empty Tomb, a shaft of light exploded down from the sky and focused directly on the cross.

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