Thank God for Jesus

Backdrop: the Pacific Ocean. Foreground: a cluster of old people. Some I recognise. Most I don’t.

Fifty years ago, and more, I saw these people every day. We pondered geometry proofs together. We ploughed through Plato and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. We sweat through the subjunctive under the beady eye of Mr Bibiloni. We soared through the exquisite notes of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet under Mr Pappone’s baton.

In June, 1969, we donned caps and gowns, all 1200 of us, and as the rousing, emotive notes of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance played on a loop, we marched into the stadium on a balmy California summer evening. We marched in as friends, and out into the world, most of us never to rub shoulders again.

We marched out into a world writhing with pain: some graduating that night would soon die in the jungles of Vietnam. Most wanted to make love, not war. Flower power was at its height. We were determined to sort out the world and leave it in better shape than our parents did.

Well. We watch and wail as climate change wreaks havoc, mostly on the poorer nations of the world, so far. We meddle in wars and make them worse, or don’t meddle and make them worse. We have no more wisdom than did our parents. Our legacy is not one of which to be proud.

We are in dire need of a Saviour.

And now we are old. Or at least, they are. I wasn’t in the picture, living on the other side of the world for most of those fifty years. But anyway, apart from my friend who has stuck close through the miles and the years, if I’ve not seen them in all this time, how can we possibly have anything to talk about? Or, conversely, with so much to talk about, how can we ever stop talking again?

Summer is over. The rowan leaves have browned and dropped. But the berries are red, deep and vibrant red. Different. Still beautiful.

We are approaching the ‘jumping off place’. (Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café). Some have already jumped. I am so grateful that, like a child leaping from the stairs into her daddy’s arms, when it comes my turn to jump, I am confident that my eternal daddy is ready to catch me.

We are all in dire need of a Saviour. Thank God for Jesus.