His House is Not My House

There was wood all around. Debris and bits of broken roof, and signs and doors that were no longer signs or doors. Everywhere clutter and remains, paving layers over concrete roads that may as well not have been there anymore. And silence. Everywhere and all around, in every café and office and school and child’s room, silence.

Only the church stood.

It was quiet inside, though for me it had been so for years. Whatever wonder resided in a Lord’s house had faded for me, and I became a stranger to the Sunday crowd, who now no longer flocked, or sang, or prayed, or anything-at-all. They were scattered and buried, while I was saved.

And yet the church and I stood. Somewhere between astronomical coincidence and miniscule miracle, like some last riddle for me to solve, placed by Someone, or by nothing.

And every night I slept outside, unsheltered in the broken world. For although empty of faith, I was not without reverence, and it was clear to me, if nothing else, that I had done nothing to deserve the shelter of that building and whatever it represented, if anything. It would have been better, then, for me to be either of blind faith or absolute apathy, and not some puzzled medium. For a faithful man could rest justified in his Shepherd’s arms, and a logical man would fear nothing of blasphemy, and so too take shelter untroubled.

But I slept outside on the stone steps every night since. Shivering and illogical, clinging to reason that would not let me pray, but with the other half of my heart, embracing that fear or awe or unnamable Something that would not let me trample the last empty house of an invisible maybe-God.