Benjamin Franklin said “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” And yet, we’re not always fans of change. Obviously, the Nettle Creek Gazette is changing (will I ever stop calling it the “Exponent”?). We live in a changing world and if we don’t change with it, we risk becoming irrelevant.

As important as change is, I’m missing what was an important part of the Gazette.

I’ll get to the point: I miss 2 Chronicles 7:14 in the upper lefthand corner of my hometown weekly newspaper. “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

To me it was a ‘touchstone”: a standard by which something is judged or recognized. Such as how we were reared in a family, or grew up in a well-grounded community. Like the light in the window when returning home, Mom in the kitchen and Dad nearby. The comfort

ing sense of home. One of the ways that I knew that all was well in my hometown was this Scripture as an ever-present cornerstone.

I took it for granted that it would always be there, because…why wouldn’t it be? And now, I miss it.

It was the first thing I read when I received the Gazette and each week I tested my memory to recite it without looking. This Scripture connected me to my home community, the people of faith in Hagerstown, and reminded me from whence I came.

Now, I know that progress and change is necessary. I appreciate the Gazette’s efforts to create printed media that people will relate to and want to read. I applaud your efforts to take on this challenge.

But still…although this may seem silly to some, I am a little less grounded to who I was as a young lady who grew up in a little farm town in Indiana because an important ‘touchstone’ has disappeared.

I know it’s not always politically correct to openly show our faith. Previously, I always proudly shared that ‘my hometown paper’ wasn’t afraid to print Scripture on the front page. Now, I feel the loss and I’m just a little bit disappointed and sad.