By Rex Herndon
Just a few miles outside of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, located just off Highway 23, is Beulah Union Church, a small white clapboard edifice, with three windows on each side and a small steeple reaching toward the heavens.
Built in 1929, by volunteers of the community on land donated by the Crews family, it became the spiritual home of hardworking families from the nearby farms and ranches.
Just a few steps from the front door of the Church, there is a small cemetery where three or four hundred folks including members of my own extended family have been laid to rest.
It was while attending a family reunion many years ago, in our hometown, my family was told of a community gathering that was to take place on Sunday at Beulah Union Church. It was called, “Dinner on the grounds” and everyone was invited.
Since my older brothers and sisters knew many of the people in that rural community, it was decided we should attend.
Driving along highway 23 that wound its way through the picturesque Arkansas hills lined with pine, maple and oak trees, we turned on to the Church grounds, where perhaps a hundred friendly people gathered to eat and engage in fellowship.
All the activity and gaiety were outside the walls of the historic sanctuary where in generations past country folks came to sing, praise, and pray in enthusiastic worship of God.
It now sits in silence, its walls no longer reverberating with the sound of a gospel message being preached, or that, of a heartfelt prayer meeting.
As a young preacher, I was fascinated by that old Country Church. I suddenly had a desire to go inside, where I could travel back in my imagination and wonder at what took place within those walls.
I slipped away from my family and the community folks, who were engrossed in eating and conversation, and walked up the steps to the front door.
I was surprised to find the door unlocked, and thinking nobody would mind, I opened the door and stepped inside.
It felt as though I had stepped through a mysterious veil from my generation to the generation of my grandparents and beyond.
There were perhaps six or eight homemade pews on each side of the building and a simple homemade pulpit on a small platform where wonderful preachers of the past had passionately proclaimed the Word of God.
For the moment, I was alone in the silence of the Sanctuary, so I swept the dust away from one of the pews and sat down, allowing my mind and imagination to go back to Sunday Services and soul stirring Revival Meetings, that had taken place there. In my mind I could hear country folks for whom life was not easy, singing;
“Amazing Grace,
How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost
But now I’m found,
Was blind but now I see.”
Then, I heard the voice of a farmer, who had come from a field where he plowed and a barn where he had milked his cows, lifting his voice in prayer, asking God to strengthen and bless his neighbors. There was such a sweet and caring spirit in the air as hearts and lives were being touched. I suddenly felt the Holy Spirit tugging at my heart strings.
Then, in my mind, I turned my attention to that rustic pulpit where men of God, from generations past poured out their hearts and called sinners to be saved, the sick and broken to be healed, and the discouraged to be lifted up.
While the people outside continued laughing and eating, I sat silently with only my thoughts. Suddenly, I felt like singing. With nobody around me, I quietly joined those saints of past generations and began to sing,
“When we’ve been there
Ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun.
We’ve no less days
To sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.”
Standing up from that humble pew, I wiped tears from my eyes as I looked at the pulpit and prayed, that, as a preacher, I would always have the same passion for God’s Word and His people as I imagined flowed from that old ‘sacred desk.”
I opened the door and stepped back through that mysterious veil into my generation, but I genuinely felt, in those moments alone with God in Beulah Union Church, I had a blessed experience with God, Who, never grows old.
The Shepherd's Staff 