Great is Thy Faithfulness

He was a kid, he said, when he went off to college, a pious kid who asked God, before he left for school, to help him with two things: he wanted God's help to get himself a good Christian education, and, if possible, he added, a good Christian spouse too. Not a lot to ask really, pretty ordinary things from a devout kid in 1966. 

There weren't many of us there for the fiftieth class reunion yesterday. Most of the attendees, like ourselves, live close or relatively close, although some came from far away. The math doesn't quite add up, but Covid put the thing off for a year, so, to be accurate, we'd have to say we were celebrating a college graduation that took place 51 years ago, which I might have called "more than a half-century" if that description didn't sound so awful. A lot has happened in the lives of those who showed, as well as those who didn't, I'm sure.

Someone had taken along print-outs of a couple of obituaries which featured classmates who'd died recently. One of them had a blistering fastball that always left my left hand inflamed after catching him. We were teammates. He was a kid with a lean, athletic build and uncommon ability, who, the obit said, once spotted a blonde freshman walking across campus and told a friend he was going to marry that girl--and then did, happily ever after too. 

Commencement was coming up the next day. He'd asked and been given what he considered a good Christian education; but this other petition seemed beyond even God's awesome reach. It was the night before commencement.

Not to express the truth of what had happened during that half century would have been cold, so, generally in smaller groupings, some of the heartbreaks were shared--widows and widowers, the deaths of small children, despair and depression, broken marriages. An old friend told the whole group that when he was a boy, he lost a little sibling to crib death. The family's preacher, a man who would become the President of the college, had came to visit the family, and there, with other mourners, they'd determined to pray. The preacher started, he said, and then quit because he was sobbing. He was just nine years old. 

Anyway, he and a bunch of his friends determined to have a party that last night before grad, so they descended into their off-campus basement apartment, and proceeded to do just that, mostly reminiscing, he said, a crowd of friends and classmates that slowly began to dwindle until there were just a handful who weren't quite yet willing to leave.

A widowed woman had come to the reunion, she said, to discover whether the college still stood for things she felt it should, things that meant so much to her and her husband, gave them a means by which to see the world, a means they'd felt so rich and important, a tremendous gift. Her husband had loved the college, she said, because he'd come as a new Christian and learned so much about God's kingship. She wondered whether kids were still leaving the way she and her husband had left.

Soon enough, down in that basement apartment, there were only two of them left, he and a girl he'd known, not well, and it was, now, somewhere close to five in the morning. About graduation the next day, he told us all, he remembered absolutely nothing. Even when he had his eyes open, he was asleep. But when that long night had ended, he would not soon forget that it was only the two of them there, and it had been very, very good. 

The reunion oldies sang some hymnbook oldies. In more than a few years of going to chapel at the Home with my wife's father, I'm sure I've tallied my personal limit of "Great is Thy Faithfulness." All year long, visiting preachers would determine how their Sunday afternoon chapel would go. With a measure of surety, they would tell the pianist to play "Great is Thy Faithfulness" because whoever the preacher was--and he was always a he--he was absolutely sure--and likely right--that all those old people would love that hymn--and they did. We sang it one more time last night.

When he told the story, he was up at the front of the room. Beside him stood the woman who had been with him all night, the evening before graduation. Right then, before the punch line had even been delivered, a room full of 73-year-olds knew exactly where this story was bringing us. Amazing. Soon enough, he said, those two hangers-on were married. In a day full of story-telling, it was the most charming story told. 

Even though--believe me!--I've rung up far more than my allotment of "Great is Thy Faithfulness" through those years we brought Dad to chapel, yet another time through that old faithful doesn't mean the lyrics just slipped by for me or any of the old folks who showed up for the reunion.

"Morning by morning, new mercies I see."