I’ve been simmering in what I wanted to write about this morning since last Sunday. Essentially, after nearly 70 years, the congregation where I received my first call back in the 90s—where I also met my wife and got married—was closed. Needless to say, the closing service was a bittersweet one.

The sanctuary was full that morning, probably fuller than it’s been in a while. I think what got me the most was the bustling before the service. It wasn’t the regular bustle of a congregation preparing for just another Sunday. It was the noisier hum of memory. People who hadn’t seen each other in years—old friends, former members, even children now grown with families of their own—all were moving into and through the pews, greeting one another.

I moved around a little, too. Not a lot, but a little. I saw folks I barely recognized. And for some reason, I couldn’t sit still. I had to go to them. This would be the final benediction in a place that had shaped so many of us. There was joy, of course, in the greetings. There was joy in the memories that came from the brief discussions. The baptisms, the confirmations, the weddings, and funerals that stitched our lives together reappeared in those moments like smiling presences. It was impossible not to feel grateful for what had been.

But there’s more.

I won’t say that the ache of finality was absent. That was a hovering specter, too. The knowledge that this beloved place would no longer echo with hymns, that its altar would no longer receive faithful Christians at its rail, that the building’s doors would finally close—this thought hung heavily.

It is one thing to know that seasons change, but it’s something altogether different to stand in the very moment when one passes into another, to feel it slipping away while at the same time holding what it gave you.

If anything, the whole event was a reminder that everything, even a congregation, has a lifespan.

Like people, organizations are living things. Congregations are, too. They grow and mature, and as they do, they store up countless moments of both joy and sorrow. They have seasons of health and vitality and, sometimes, seasons of struggle. And eventually, as with all things under heaven, they reach their appointed end. To say these things is not to be negative. It’s to be honest.

We do well to remember this, if only for the sake of keeping a proper perspective relative to all things in this life. When we know that nothing here is meant to last forever, we learn to cherish what we have for as long as we have it.

There’s a song by Poor Man’s Poison that my wife, Jennifer, has taken a liking to. It’s called “Ireland Sky.” In it, there are the lines, “When you wake, just take it all in. Be sure to live for right there and right then. ’Cause we only have today, but tomorrow we may die. So let’s shout out loud to the starry sky.”

At first thought, you might think the song is hedonistic—or maybe epicurean in nature. But it isn’t. It’s born from an Irish blessing. It’s meant to wish you well along life’s way, trusting that as you go, the winds will always be at your back, even as you keep in mind life’s brevity. It’s meant to keep you from taking lightly what God has entrusted to us in the present. In other words, don’t hurry past today. It may seem ordinary, and yet, as the closing service last Sunday brought into crisp focus in a very unique way, even the ordinary things are gifts that will one day be remembered as extraordinary.

Of course, all of this is easier said than done. And admittedly, I’m the worst offender. I go along from day to day at top speed, missing so much more than I likely realize. Still, moments like last Sunday have a way of landing right in front of me, slowing me down, if only for a while. They demand that I stop and take notice. They remind me that the things I so easily label as “routine” are in fact the very things that are likely shaping me most profoundly.

Parents, I can’t even begin to describe the profoundness of this relative to children. What we might be tempted to brush off as routine—Sunday after Sunday of getting the kids ready for worship, only to traipse out the door when you’d much rather go back to bed. And when you get there, a hymn sung a hundred times over, a liturgy you don’t even need the hymn book to follow. What glorious mundaneness! These are the stitches that, over time, hold together the fabric of a life rooted in Christ. These are the things that take deepest root in young hearts. Children may not always grasp the whole meaning in the moment, but they are absorbing more than we realize. They are learning the rhythms of God’s grace, the cadences of His Gospel, the shape of a cruciform life that’s fixed to the only One who remains immovable in this world’s winds.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking your children will pick these things up later when they get older or when life slows down. They won’t. Because they’re just like the rest of us. That means they need to be taught—led to participate alongside us now. The sights, sounds, and smells of it all. Yes, the Word! But I’d say even the sun through the stained glass, the creak of the family pew, a familiar friend’s voice, the smell of the extinguished candles. All of these things become part of the landscape of their souls. Even if they wander far, these things remain. They become landmarks, signposts pointing them home to something better.

This is all just one more reason why it matters so deeply to keep children connected to worship. Doing so is to invite them into the holy patterns of the Church’s life. When they see their parents kneeling, when they hear their grandparents singing, when they sense that they themselves belong to something larger and older and holier than their own small world—they are being catechized, quietly and intensely, in what it means to be the people of God.

I mentioned before that some of the people I saw last Sunday I barely recognized. That’s because they were children when I knew them. But they’re grown now. And their presence was proof that the foundation they received remains. The congregation may have reached its end, but what was established in those little hearts is still alive, still bearing fruit, still part of God’s larger story.

I suppose that is an aspect of the hope to be had in a congregation’s closing. Indeed, the Word of the Lord endures forever. What was preached, sung, prayed, and lived in that place is not lost. Instead, it carries on in the lives of those who were shaped there, most especially, the children.

Parents, with that in mind, don’t hurry past the ordinary mercies of today. Give your children the gift of showing up, of kneeling, of singing, of praying, of being present in the places where God promises to meet us. I can assure you that in these seemingly small things, eternity is breaking in.