The House on Holy Ground

It was the summer of 1968, and our family had been invited to a camp ground in Maryland. It was considered special by the hosts of the meeting—in their words it was “Holy Ground.” And I will not choose to disagree with that, for the people there truly loved the Lord and they were immensely kind to us.

We arrived on a sunny afternoon and we made a beeline to the reception room at the entrance of a very old house. Once past the formalities of registering, Norma and I began looking around the many wooded paths and we began meeting the friendly people. Then a cry of alarm came from the friend who had brought us. He informed us that my children were playing cards in the reception room! Somehow their card-playing antics did not fit into the “holy” atmosphere of that ancient structure. We hurriedly made our way back to the house and restored some order. Thankfully only a small handful of people saw this deviation from holiness and all was forgotten.

The food served to us in the dining hall was beyond belief. I never have seen such huge quantities of delicious, mouth-watering chicken, biscuits and pies, along with the required veggies that Norma always tried to get me to eat. Anyway, we had arrived in culinary heaven, or at least it seemed that way.

I will never forget that first night. We were told to make our way up a long flight of creaky stairs to our rooms. Since our friends, Charlie and Rosie, claimed to be younger than Norma and I (and they were), they elected to go all the way to the third floor while we stayed on the second floor—directly below them. In the middle of the night we heard talking—or was it a cry of terror—from the room above. “Charlie, get the tennis racket.” We listened repeatedly to the sounds of “here he comes again.” Well, it seems there were bats in that old house and they had been relegated to the third floor. Charlie, bless his soul, never moved from underneath the sheets—who would want to get into the path of those bats as they swooped back and forth in the room. Yes, Charlie, the younger ones can have the third floor.

On another night we devised a way to harass our preacher friend, Ted. Charlie and I sneaked into his bedroom, short-sheeted the linens, and put a small rock under one leg of the rickety four-poster bed. I did not get much sleep that night, but finally at about 3 in the morning there was a loud ‘thump’ as the whole house shook. Some things are just worth waiting for! We slept with a smile.

Should all of this make someone think that we were irreverent? I pray not. Life is meant to be enjoyed with friends, and I really suspect God had a good laugh over our adventures as well. His love for us would seem to include the ability to laugh at our frailties and our attempts to enjoy the experience of “Holy Ground."
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