It seems so long ago- reflections on college life

Sometimes “I get to thinking on the past” so begins a well known Leonard Cohen song “Tonight will be fine”( I am not sure it is in the Baptist hymnbook!)

I have been encouraged in that process  of reminiscing by a whole series of photos that have been  posted on Facebook that were taken during college days ,long, long ago.

The truth is while I (mostly) enjoyed my time at college, I haven’t thought a great deal about it since. That is probably my loss for I certainly learned a lot and met some very good people,but maybe by nature I like to move forward, (indeed one of the reasons I started this blog was to encourage me to reflect more)

There is though something  about photographs  of the past, and of people that you once  knew very well indeed, that is absolutely fascinating. I wondered how they were doing ,whether their lives had been fulfilled ,and of course whether their faith had grown or dissipated, matured or stagnated .

Wondering about others ,of course encouraged me to look into my own heart and to reflect on some of the many mistakes I made then, and have made since then.

I remember my very first night at BTI there was a welcome service ,we started with” O for a thousand tongues to sing “ Since that day I have heard louder singing sometimes, and better singing frequently, but never such passionate singing. These were people who in some cases had sacrificed a lot to get to college, people who were committed to doing God’s will for their lives. Many of them went to serve in foreign mission fields ,some are still there decades later. These were not perfect people(though probably a bit more perfect than me) but they were  people with big characters who took their Christian faith seriously –who allowed it so shape their lives that they were changed.

Our excellent lecturers are either very old and frail or have gone to their reward, some of our fellow students have also died but well into my fifties and looking at the photos, my prayer for myself and for them is that we finish well; that we display the same passion for Jesus in our later years that we did when we walked up Bothwell St and climbed the steps into number 64 one autumn long ago.