Sign from God soaks church

PLYMOUTH, Ind – A message sent from above drips all the way down the sanctuary of the Plymouth Church of the Brethren.

“Way up in the point of the ceiling you can see brown streaks coming down the wall,” Pastor Ruth Yoder said on Thursday.

The sticky substance has been leaking from the top of the church for almost a month now, “Running down the cross itself the walls beside it and then dripping on the altar table,” Yoder said.

Honey trickles down all the way from the top to the bottom of the church. The golden brown blobs of goo are hard to miss, but even more difficult to explain.

Yoder asked, “So what is God’s message to me in this?  What does God want me to learn? What does God want the church to learn?”

The pastor said there is always a message to be found or lessoned to be learned, Yonder just isn’t totally sure what to think about this sticky situation. But at least, this sign is not as daunting as the last one the church received.

Bees moved inside of the big white cross behind on the wall behind the altar, Yoder said, “They would actually come out of the cross and die on the floor behind there.”

In July the church brought in an exterminator to wipe out the colony of bees, five months later honey started to seep from the ceiling.

“We really don’t understand why this problem has happened,” Yoder said.

Somewhere, there is a honeycomb oozing honey. Like drops of rain, little balls of honey fell from the cross on the very Sunday Yoder planned to premier the church’s new projection screen.

The honey damaged the brand new, motorized screen and Yoder was told it could be ruined if the honey continued to drip on it.

Now, covered with a plastic sheet the screen remains in place and unused. Down below the altar has been pushed forward to protect it from any more honey drops.

“Sometimes God allows things to happen in our lives that we don’t understand,” Yoder said.

The church continues to get estimates for the repairs necessary to find and remove the honeycomb, Yoder would not give any numbers but she did say it would be cheap.

Scaffolding will have to be built inside the church to take out sections of the ceiling and walls to find the source of the leak before anything can be cleaned or fixed. And after a four week steady drip, this comb just won't dry out.  

Even though the honey has caused nothing but trouble at the church, Yoder said there could be a deeper, better meaning behind it.

“There is a scripture in the Psalms that talks about God’s words being as sweet as honey right from the honeycomb.”

Yoder said it’s the very same verse that she has pictured and hung in her office, which is why she said this sign may be sticky but it’s also sweet.

“God will bring good out of it, even if it seems like a bad thing in the beginning,” Yoder said.  

At the very least, it gives everyone in the congregation bragging rights around town, “Now we can rightfully claim that we are the sweetest church in Plymouth,” Yoder said.