In retrospect.

     A couple of white settlers were walking through the land near The Little House in the 1880's. Passing the rocky hills of a small lake after a prairie fire, they commented "It looks like Mt. Sinai." That is how the lake was named. The lake was dry and farmed in the 1930's. My first memory of it was a huge cattail slough in the 40's. In the 50's I could wade much of it with chest waders.  Since the wet years began in 1984 it has become a huge lake of thousands of acres and many feet deep.
   In the late 1880's, when a Lutheran Church was founded, it was named Lake Sinai Lutheran.  Eventually 'Lake' was dropped from the name and it remains Sinai Lutheran today. The churchyard was also the cemetery.
   In 1907  The Great Northern Railroad  ran a line from Sioux Falls to Watertown which required water stops, for the steam engines, every seven miles so the town of Sinai (pronounced locally as Siinyii, a corruption of the Norwegian) was founded. Sinai is a half a mile east of where the church stood. When it was time to build a new church it was built in town, dedicated in 1950.
    There were very good reasons to locate it in town. In retrospect though, I think something was lost by moving from the cemetery.  "You are dust and to dust you shall return" says the pastor on Ash Wednesday. Walking into church on Sunday, past grave markers, perhaps even those of your ancestors, is a visible reminder of our journey toward dust. "Teach us to number our days and so get a heart of wisdom." If the church was in the cemetery, on my way to the entrance, I'd walk near a grave marker with my name on it.
     Now, that I've become a denizen of the cemetery, a church on the grounds would be welcome. Would it be helpful to others? Or, is it just me?

Takk for alt,

Al