Pride Goeth Before a Fall. Part 1

“Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall” Proverbs 1:18.

Growing up in rural Alabama, church and community played an integral role in our family and influenced our lives. It wasn’t one thing or one person but an accumulation of people and events that shaped me into the person I am today.

Our family attended a small clapboard church with wooden floors. It was within walking distance of our home, and its cemetery joined one edge of our pasture. Churchgoers could look out the window during services and see our cows grazing in the field.

The church never locked its doors. As a result, people could enter the building at any time.

During the summer many years ago, a barefoot seven-year-old girl often went inside the church to play the piano when no one was around. Or so she thought. The church parsonage was nearby, and when the pastor heard someone playing the piano, he quietly slipped in to listen. He told the little girl’s parents what he had heard. They wasted no time purchasing a used piano built in 1906 and arranging lessons from a lady down the road. I was the little girl, and the piano has traveled with me throughout my life. It sits in my den today.

I am thankful for a country church that left its doors unlocked many years ago.

My childhood memories of church include Vacation Bible School, Sunday afternoon singings, baptisms in the lake, ice cream socials, and cookouts.

The annual Christmas play written, directed, and performed by church members will forever hold a special place in my memory bank.

I will never forget the yearly Easter musical, where choir members put their heart and soul into an event to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. But it was Homecoming held each year on the second Sunday of June that brought the neighborhood together.

People came to decorate graves with beautiful sprays of flowers and share food, fellowship, and memories. There was preaching in the morning and gospel singing in the afternoon. Family and friends who had moved away returned for this special day. It was the one event each year attended by those who didn’t attend services regularly.

Since 1942, my home church has celebrated Homecoming Day every year, a tradition that unites the past with the present and brings hope for the future.

The grownups of our community had a lot of sayings. One phrase often heard was “pride goeth before a fall.” Parents, grandparents, and teachers at school said it. Preachers quoted it in sermons; somehow, Sunday School teachers could sneak that phrase into just about every lesson they taught. Or so it seemed. I thought it was one of those “sayings” that belonged in the same category as “don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” I was well into my teens before I discovered it was a Scripture.

And it was on Homecoming Sunday years ago, as a young mother, I learned a valuable lesson about “pride goeth before a fall.”

Read Part 2 

I had the honor of my story, Pride Goeth Before a Fall, first printed in The House That Built Me by SCWC. Available from Amazon.