At his funeral (a long time ago now, I was only a teenager), we sang the hymn 'Great is Thy Faithfulness' (I'm doubting myself right now because it's one of those weeks, but I'm just about convinced - the hymn always reminds me of him), and as I attended the church up the road today online (because when you've put together an online service you don't always want to watch yourself preach or take communion with yourself) we finished with the same hymn..... and my thoughts went back to my Granddad, as they often do.
What would he have thought at a time like this? How would he have reacted?
I don't know really - he died before I started to have too many in depth conversations about faith and life.... but I'd imagine he'd be frustrated. I'd imagine that over the past 18 months the loss of freedoms in worship would have got him down. I'd imagine that my Grandma would have been anxious and my Grandad would have had to try and be the level one.
It seems so long ago that my Grandad died and my biggest memories of him, as well as the organ playing, are him sneaking a cigarette on a walk on the cold Hartlepool seafront telling us not to tell our Grandma because despite 40 years of marriage she 'didn't know' and teas where the offer of jam tarts was often on the table..... yet in amongst the ordinariness of all that (ordinariness in a Nicholls way), he continued to walk in the ways of God and God continued to be faithful in his life, working through him in amazing ways.
The writer of the hymn 'Great is thy faithfulness', Thomas Chisholm, lived an ordinary life, there was no big disaster or time of grief or significant encounter that inspired the hymn, just words of faithfulness from the prophet Jeremiah in Lamentations 3. It was written in 1923, which was not long after my Granddad was born, so he would have grown up with it. It's a hymn of how God is with you through all the significant and insignificant times. It's like the footprints poem but with a deeper dig into the theology of it. God never leaves you and provides hope for tomorrow. Whatever today brings, there is better and more ahead. God is with you in the most ordinary of moments as well as the less ordinary ones.
It pops up quite often at significant times and this morning as it popped up it moved me. I've been in isolation for 6 days and it's getting me down and Sunday is always worse because I just want to be with my church family, but in this hymn I was reminded of how God has been faithful through the last 18 months (and before that)..... that somehow we've got to today and I'm still standing firm - church is standing just about together and things are looking up.
The next few weeks feel uncertain. I feel like I'm meant to be excited about restrictions easing, but I am really not. The pandemic hasn't eased up enough for me to be anywhere near excited and I continue to be fearful. The weight of the next is heavy and self isolation has brought more time for reflection on this.
But, in this song I am reminded that through the lives of those who have gone before I have seen God's faithfulness. Through the lives of those who are walking with me now, I have seen and experienced God's faithfulness.... and through the lives of those who are going to walk beyond the path God has put me on now, he will continue to be faithful.... because that is Him.... that is God.
Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father.
There is no shadow of turning with thee
Thou changest not, they compassions, the fail not
As thou hast been thou forever wilt be.
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God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out,
his merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
They’re created new every morning.
How great your faithfulness!
I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over).
He’s all I’ve got left. Lamentations 3:22-23 (Message Version)
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