Yesterday I was looking through a list of names, paying special attention to the names with an asterisk. It’s alumni time on campus and an emotional time is the Jubilarian Service that commemorates our graduates from 50 years ago. The names with asterisks were those from the class of 1961 who had died.
As we get older, we know that an asterisk will be coming to our name. That makes reunions and getting together an indescribably rich human experience. For us who are a bit younger but old enough to know what life is like, seeing jubilarians get together is encouraging, especially when they gather with confidence in the resurrection. They say the dash between a person’s birth date and death date is most important. Yesterday’s service had a prayer for all of us still “living the dash.”
“By joys of life, by human love, by affection and fidelity of friends; by capacity for pleasure and sense of humor; by persistency in hope of things to come: Edify us and draw us ever nearer to You. By sorrows of life; by our falls and failures; by our disappointments and disasters; by stern discipline of loneliness; by realized dreams and by heartache of unsatisfied desires: Form us and draw us ever nearer to You.”
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