Today is a holiday, not a national holiday but one that is observed, under different names, in every part of Canada except Yukon, Newfoundland and Quebec. Here in Saskatchewan it is called Saskatchewan Day.

A singer-songwriter released a new Saskatchewan song today. I listened to it once and wondered whatever happened to songs that everyone could sing, the kind of song that we could sing around a campfire on a summer evening.

I used to think that the best poetry of our era was being written by songwriters like Gordon Lightfoot and Paul Simon. Real poetry that stuck in the mind and made you think, poetry that you would find yourself singing to yourself.

There are still some meaningful and singable hymns being written, for which I am thankful. And some that will likely soon be forgotten. There was a line in a Guess Who song from years ago that went “Too many churches, and not enough truth.” I can agree with that, but it would also be true to say “Too many songs, and not enough meaning.”

These rambling thoughts may be the result of our visit to Moose Jaw on Saturday. There was a big antique car show going on there, but that wasn’t what we went for. One of us would have found it interesting, but we were there because of something the two of us did together 56 years earlier – we got married in Moose Jaw on August 1, 1970.

We visited my wife’s sister and the widow of my cousin, but mostly we just rambled around the old familiar places of this city we used to call home. It’s not the place we once knew, even if much of it still looks familiar. The church where we were married, an ornate brick structure, is now a private home. At the largest church in town, with the tallest steeple, and a magnificent Casavant pipe organ, the congregation has dissolved. My aunt’s funeral was held in this church more than 50 years ago, presided by a minister who did not have a God to pray to. Another denomination has purchased the building. At the church we attended for several years, the congregation dissolved and sold the building to another denomination.

Some churches serve coffee, but would it be the flavour of coffee that I prefer? Do they serve the flavour of gospel that I prefer? Is that what church is all about? There’s an incredible variety of churches available, choose the flavour that you are most comfortable with, and if they mess up one Sunday, try another? That makes for restless Christians.

Our Sunday School topic yesterday was about the danger of being lukewarm. Am I different from other people? I don’t worry about becoming lukewarm, I am very much aware that lukewarm is my default setting, I don’t like to venture out of my comfort zone. Someone has said that an effective church should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. People are searching for answers for the pressing questions of their existence. Isn’t that what a church should be known for? People are searching for something to give meaning to their lives. Neither empty piety nor frenetic activity can satisfy those longings. Only the plain truth of the Gospel can heal the wounded and nudge the lukewarm to venture out of their comfort zones.