One If By Land, Two If By Sea
When we met our friends Garth and Terry in 1993, they had been married for six years and their older daughter was one year old. Now their older daughter is married and their younger one is a senior in college. Ray and I were excited for them this past winter when they started planning a trip for their thirtieth anniversary. They finally decided on a spring cruise to New England and eastern Canada. We were even more excited when they invited us to come along.
We left home on Sunday two weeks ago and got home yesterday. They and we are budget travelers and Internet service on a cruise ship is super expensive. I wanted to take you along with me as we traveled; but the combination of not finding a house sitter, the high cost of cruise Internet, and the need for a real vacation without even writing (except in my journal) made me decide to write the last two weeks of posts before we left and save the trip adventures for when I got back home.
One of the many things Garth and Terry are good at is scheduling margin — not one of my strong traits. We were to board the ship on Tuesday morning; so at their suggestion, we went to Nashville on Sunday night, took a shuttle to the airport on Monday morning, and arrived in Boston on Monday afternoon.
This sane schedule gave us time to take a walk to the Old North Church on Monday afternoon and relax that evening before taking a bus to the port on Tuesday.
It had been more than twenty years since Ray and I were inside the Old North Church, but the same feature stood out to me again: the family pews with their doors and name plates.
These interiors vary according to how an individual family decorated them.
One beautiful feature of the church is its high pulpit . . .
. . . and the stairway leading up to it.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” on April 18, 1775, one of the most famous feats of the American Revolution, when he published his poem by that title some eighty years later.
Actually Paul Revere was one of about thirty riders that night who warned American volunteers about the actions of the British Navy. However, Revere did play a leadership role. It was Revere who instructed two men — church caretaker (called a sexton) Robert Newman and Revere’s friend Captain John Pulling Jr. — to come to the Old North Church that night to use lanterns as a signal.
Newman and Pulling went through the front door and locked it behind them. They climbed a staircase to the balcony level.
They went behind the pipe organ . . .
. . . and climbed winding stairs and ladders until they reached the steeple window.
There they lit two lanterns for only sixty seconds. This quick signal sent Revere and other riders into the night to let their fellow revolutionaries know the actions of the British Navy.
When British troops arrived in Lexington, Massachusetts, the following day, American militia men who had heeded the warning of Paul Revere and his fellow riders met them. The first shot fired that day came to be called “the shot heard ’round the world.” The ensuing battle is considered the first battle of the American Revolution.
Patriotic items, such as this bust of President George Washington, decorate the Old North Church. French General Lafayette said that the bust was more like President Washington than any other likeness Lafayette had known.
This prayer cushion states that our nation is the parish of this church, which is also called Christ Church.
I was happy to see that the church did not only honor our country but that it honored our Savior, too.
Being found in appearance as a man,
He humbled Himself
by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
For this reason also, God highly exalted Him,
and bestowed on Him
the name which is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven
and on earth and under the earth,
and that every tongue will confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:8-11