I so love going back into the church mid-afternoon on a Sunday to see all the votive candles burning. Each represents someone's prayer. I may know who lit some of them, and then there are others that were lit unseen but not unprayed. These candles will burn until tonight sometime and then the next week's cycle will begin.
Three or four rectors back there was a battle over this votive stand. The rector didn't like it and the parishioners did. The rector would 'disappear' the votives, especially on Easter, because the rector didn't want visitors to think that we were 'that kind of church' and the parishioners would haul it back in. Back and forth and back and forth the stand would go. The rector finally gave up and let it stay. Let's say that that period in the congregation's history was not one of the happiest.
This stand is such an integral part of the Sunday worship of this congregation that I can't imagine it ever disappear again. Hope not. I get the pleasure of being the first person on Sunday to light a candle.
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