To Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.

Refrain
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

Refrain

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

Refrain


This morning we sang this hymn at the ladies luncheon at church. Miss Iowa (Olivia Meyers) spoke and a mother/daughter led a music time. It was a wonderful chance to get to know a few ladies better and to hear some encouraging words from a young woman who had accomplished much in the pageant world.

But as we sang this song, "Great is Thy Faithfulness", I found myself reflecting on my previous summer in London. "Morning by morning new mercies I see" probably tipped me off. You see, every morning as I woke to a cheery London sun at 6AM, I met with God. I knew I could have woken at 7AM and still have made it to work on time, but I wanted the extra time to spend with my Father, alone and focused. Every morning, I thanked Him for bringing me through another day; I couldn't do much more than that-- take the months one 24 hour block at a time. But in those mornings, I did see new mercies, day after day. He allowed me to mature as a Christian, to grow in my faith in Him. By simply waking up, I knew He had given me whatever I needed to make it through the previous day, which was a special mercy in itself.

Each morning was a reminder of His faithfulness. As my class, Katie Beth, touring, and my job came and went, He did not change. He was constant. Dependable, secure. The only thing that really remained unchanging, really. Perhaps why I could truly see my dependence on God so clearly during that time was because His unwavering stability was so obvious. Everything else was changing-- Ben was graduating, Grandma and Grandpa were having their 50th wedding anniversary, I was moving off campus and becoming a junior. Plus, there was all the new London stuff-- friends, flat, internship, food, church, Tube, the list goes on and on and on and on. With just about everything in flux, I could see and firmly grab on to whatever wasn't changing.

I know I've mentioned it before, but I basically try to resist change. I operate very well with things I know, though I often I grow bored with them. New things are...well, new. I don't know them, nor do I have any way to understand them. As I've discovered, I often don't realize that I've adjust to change until a new change comes along-- just as when I didn't like beginning to work because it was a change from going to class, which I previously didn't like. "Didn't like" isn't really the right phrase, though. "Uncomfortable" would be more appropriate.

Strange, I can't place exactly why I'm usually uncomfortable with change. Probably because it's a very core motivation, discovery of which will require digging past layers and layers of other, auxillary motivations. Hm, that means I can't jump straight to it and may have to link a few motivations before arriving at the end. Perhaps a car ride to talk it over with myself would help.

In any case, back to the hymn. The first two verses reminded me of God's faithfulness while in London, but the last two verses rang so true for the past school year. Nothing has gone wrong. Sure, there were a few rough patches with friends or school, but they were transient and overcome with a little hardwork.

I look at my life and I see nothing to be sad about, nothing big really. I've never attended a family member's funeral (well, when I was two for my great-grandma, but I don't remember it or her).

"Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!"

I could never count how God has blessed me this past year. His provisions have been innumerable, really. He's allowed me success in so many things, and I don't honestly understand why. I'll often ask Him why He has chosen to give me these things; I know I do nothing to deserve them. I'm a big believer in equity-- you are awarded appropriately for your work. But on the spiritual level this approach is does not fly with God's system. Well, I guess it kinda does Old Testament style (even then an individual cannot outweigh their bad with their good), but with Jesus's death and resurrection equity is completely out of the picture.

"To Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love."

My job is simply to use what He has given me now and in the future to glorify Him. It's not really necessary, then, to understand precisely why and how God gives- except perhaps to understand that what He provides is designed to provide the maximum amount of glory to God, and at that moment, having bunches of blessings is how He has planned it to be. The blessings are not about me, so the question of why I receive them is irrelevent. In fact, putting myself in the picture is almost presumptous. My role is to use what God provides, as He provides it, to glorify Him, to follow His will.