Friends are Friends Forever

“Every cloud has a silver lining,” I remarked to my husband as we drove home yesterday from the funeral services of a dear friend held at a Wichita church. Despite the pall of sorrow and sad good-byes that hung over the gathering, time and again our spirits were lifted when we bumped into people we had known when we were part of that church more than 15 years ago.

“Pastor Howard!” we would hear, then, turning we would see a familiar face. Changed a little, the older ones (we were Seniors/Singles pastors) with a few more wrinkles and grey hair, but recognizable, especially by their smiles, voices and warm greetings. (I’m sure we had changed, too!) The first person we met while going in the front door was the daughter of the pastors we’d had as teenagers in Oklahoma. We had known her and her husband at this church, too, where by that time we were all senior citizens.

Many of our remaining “seniors” group were now in their eighties; a little frail, maybe using a cane or walker, but their spirits were still young and enthusiastic, recalling memories of our days together. “Those were some good times back then,” a faithful former deacon reminisced, shaking his head. The church had experienced many changes in the recent past, but several assured us that things were getting better again.

Those we remembered as young married couples now had married children of their own, introducing a young woman on their arm or a man by their side as the child we used to know. “I wonder where so-and-so was,” I remarked to Howard later, as I missed this or that one, then realized sadly that they had probably passed on.

"My two favorite Sunday School teachers of all time were Pastor Howard and Pastor Mark (our son who had served at the church at a later date),” stated one (to us)“young” person. When she found out we are working in a church in Newkirk, near the Kansas line, she vowed she would come to visit a service.

“I need a haircut!” I heard Howard exclaim as a familiar figure who used to be his barber approached. “I slept in your trailer!” he announced to another couple. When I asked him about it, he said, “Don’t you remember when I had to take a turn guarding the “Festival of Lights” over night one Christmas?” I guess I had forgotten.

It was almost as if we had never been away, the gap of time was so easily closed by our reunion. “Just think how many wonderful people we have met in our lifetime,” Howard mused on the ride home, “And we probably wouldn’t have met them if we hadn’t been in church,” he concluded. I agreed. The best friends of our life, the ones we still keep in touch with across the country, are those of “like precious faith,” the ones with whom we had sweet fellowship at church.