"Retrospect........................."

My second oldest grandson starts college today. It’s just a local extension of the state university, within his parent’s budget and just a short drive, keeping them happy and making him excited. I remember my own time of leaving the nest. My father had died six months earlier, an accident that changed the future for all of us, me abandoning a scholarship in engineering and working a short time for the company who had already lost money in sponsoring such venture. I was just eighteen, though. How many of us really have any sense of direction at that point? When the airplane began to taxi toward the runway that night in 1960, my mother and siblings were waving at me from the windows of the terminal and there was a “lump” inside me fully aware that a part of me was being left behind. At the same time, however, youth was anxious for whatever was waiting for me at the other end of this leap. No plan. No purpose. Let’s get this thing off the ground… Fifty-two years later. I found myself Sunday evening sitting in the church balcony and looking down on a handful of others like Elijah, recent graduates who are about to embark on their own journey. Some have known our sanctuary from birth. All will set forth with more spiritual experience than this old man possessed in the beginning. Nonetheless, four decades in Christ have taught me that “faith” isn’t so much a personal sword one swings as a “conqueror of all things”, but rather an “anchor in Him” that has held me in spite of whatever life brought to me. Hopefully, I pray, somewhere beyond all the boasts of promised prosperity, guaranteed healing, and assured victory in all that they do, some mother and father has taught their child that tomorrow is “through the veil”, each day holding its own lesson to learn, and their best shot is a daily return to the well……