Part III: On to Boston

Once in Boston, we stayed at the Omni Parker House Hotel , which Daddy had picked because all sorts of famous authors had stayed there, including Charles Dickens and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. There was all kinds of memorabilia in the lobby, such as a mirror that he used to prepare for readings of his works. Apparently, he would act out his dialogue, using wild gestures and strange facial expressions to make his characters come alive. He sounds like such an eccentric, taking long walks through Boston, wearing a brightly colored coat and a striped cravat and attracting all kinds of attention. He was part of a men's group called the Saturday Club that met at this hotel and included poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., the father of the Supreme Court justice.
Another neat thing about this hotel was that it was within walking distance of most of the more well-known historic sites in Boston. On Sunday morning, we visited a congregational church called Park Street Church just three blocks from our hotel. The setting for worship was sweet -- the historic building, the choir singing traditional hymns in harmony, a haunting French horn as we closed. Outside the window, I could see old crooked headstones in a cemetery, reminding me to focus on eternity. We liked the preaching fine and respected what this church seems to be trying to do in a very liberal area.
The history of the church is a noble one. Here is an excerpt from their website on how the church started:
"We hereby covenant and engage... to give up ourselves unto the Lord... to unite together into one body for the public worship of God and the mutual edification one of another in the fellowship of the Lord Jesus: exhorting, reproving, comforting and watching over each other, for mutual edification; looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of ... our Savior Jesus." (from the park Street Church Articles of Faith and Government, adopted on Feb. 23, 1809)
"With these words, twenty-six charter members covenanted together to form Park Street Church.
In a time of increasing apostasy from the gospel and rising unitarianism in New England, a small group of devoted Christians, primarily form th Old South Church, formed a "Religious Improvement Society" in 1804 to hold weekly prayer meetings and lectures. Though they faced opposition from all sides, the group continued to meet for six years, founding Park Street Church in February of 1809."
Anyway, starting off our sightseeing with the timeless Truths of the Lord made all of the history we encountered even richer. We saw the Old South Meetinghouse, where they made plans for the Boston Tea Party; the Old Statehouse, outside whose doors five Americans were killed by British soldiers in 1870 -- the Boston Massacre. We walked past Faneuil Hall and cemeteries where Ben Franklin's parents, Sam Adams, William Dawes and pilgrim Mary Chilton were buried. Our walk ended at the Old North Church, where the two lanterns had been hung at the start of Paul Revere's famous ride to alert the minutemen.
The entire time we were walking the Freedom Trail in Boston, I was wishing you kids could see all that we were seeing. It just makes all the books that we have read about this time period come to life. To see it through your eyes would give me great joy.
But I am so grateful that the Lord gave Daddy and I this time to enjoy our marriage and each other. God has chosen to bless our marriage: Being with him fills me with deep, increasing joy. Nobody makes me laugh as hard as Daddy, nobody is as full of interesting perspectives and facts as him, and there is nobody I enjoy more. I am so thankful that that is the case. That is an amazing thing to me, after all these years. We just read in The Holiness of God that "what emerges in great art and great music is a depth of dimension that does not quickly become stale or trite... the piece tends to become more and more fascinating as you discover more intricate nuances to it." And I am so grateful that the Lord has chosen to make this marriage a thing of beauty. Objectively. You kids have been given a rare gift in having parents who have been inexplicably blessed in this way. It is nothing that we did, and we certainly didn't deserve it. This marriage is nothing but the grace of God. I thank the Lord that He gave that to us -- and also to you. May this anniversary celebration bring you as much joy as it does us and may this marriage be a picture that you will always carry in your heart -- a picture of Christ and His joyful, grateful bride. Always pray for the Lord protect our precious marriage and to use it to bring glory to His name.