Great is your faithfulness

greatisthyfaithfulness This morning, at the meeting of our church, we sang an old hymn. “What’s so strange about that?” you may ask. Well, we normally sing more modern worship songs, and rarely sing what would normally be described as a hymn.

We sang these words in response to a moving account from one of our people about difficulties he had to face this past week. But through it all he had a conviction that God is faithful.

My fathers favourite

This hymn was my father’s favourite and we sang it at his funeral a few years ago. As a young man, I remember him preaching about the faithfulness of God. Being interested in astronomy myself, his description of binary stars stuck in my mind, and he described how the light from these 2 uneven stars would vary as they rotated around each other. God is not like that, his goodness towards us is constant, and not like those binary stars. “There is no shadow of turning with you”.

Emotional

11 years ago I had a stroke. Some of the limiting effects remain, but I am grateful for one effect in particular. Since the stroke I am a more emotional person, and I am glad of that.

As we sung that hymn, without hymn books or overhead projector, the words I had sung so often in the past came back to me as we sung out. The trouble was that some of the words are so meaningful, that my voice kept cutting out, and there were sections I could not sing. Words like:

O God my father
There is no shadow of turning with you
Your compassions, they fail not
As you have been – you forever will be
All I have needed your hand has provided
Join with all nature in manifold witness
Strength for today
Bright hope for tomorrow

Before long tears were streaming down my face.