“Increase Our Faith!” They Said

I had spoken at my uncle’s memorial service,
Saying the things you might expect,
The kind of guy he was, etc.
I referred to an old oral letter
He’d sent to me on cassette tape which,
On the way back to my pew,
I handed to his only child, his daughter, my cousin.
“You will love it,” I said.
And then I sat down,
Satisfied that perhaps in some way,
I had increased their faith
(In God, if not in me?)
Then we sang a hymn that I didn’t know
(Long before its inclusion
In the Presbyterian hymnal).
But my younger brother, standing next to me,
Belted it out from memory.
His different theological route from mine
Had taken him to this place I did not know.
“Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with thee.”
I can still hear and picture him in that congregation,
Even more so as he, himself, recently dead,
Still brings tears to my eyes.
And I like to think I learned then,
As maybe the apostles learned,
If they listened that day,
A new theology,
Or new analogy,
Some new hymnology,
Sung way back in Lamentations,
And later served up at table,
In life and in words (the tape of which we still play)
By a Master of such increased faithfulness
You can hardly believe it.