driving to Binghamton

This is one of my favorite hymns:

I know not why God's wondrous grace to me he hath made known,
Nor why, with mercy, Christ in love redeemed me for his own.

But I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able
To keep that which I've committed unto him against that day.

It's one of the ones that comes up often when my extended family is gathered for musicmaking. The hymn goes on, laying out a creed in the negative- verses of things I don't understand, held against the one thing I know for sure.

I used to make up my own verses for this hymn. It started as a joke, when I was taking General Chemistry at Houghton. Late at night on the fourth floor of the science building, my friends and I would write verses about electrochemistry, stoichiometry, and a punk named Avogadro.

The idea stuck, though. This hymn has gotten me through a plethora of unanswerable questions- which, by the way, are pretty much my biggest nightmare. I like bugs and spiders and snakes and even caterpillars, heights and driving fast and attending Unitarian churches, but questions I can't answer give me the creeps.

I hit such a question on Interstate 86, driving toward Binghamton last Thursday. Perseverate has been the word of the day for weeks now, so I turned off Thelonious Monk and settled in for a good argument with myself.

This would be a great point for a phrase like "twilight was creeping up like a black cat in moccasins," but it wasn't, really; I was speeding into it.* Usually there are eight magic minutes between when the sun first touches the horizon and when it disappears behind the trees, but this interval shortens dramatically when one is fleeing eastward.

Perseverating along, I didn't notice for a while that I was being tailed by a semi. Moreover, this was no heathen truck- the grille was bearing a lit up cross which shone brightly in my mirror. Like with Paul on the road to Damascus, the light of Christ was blinding. I had to flip the dimmer switch to escape it.

Then, unlike my usual rational self, I flipped the mirror back to the daytime setting and just drove with the glare. Who needs to see the road when you can see the Light, right? That's when this hymn came to mind, and without Monk in my speakers I started singing.

I know not how this saving faith to me he did impart,
Nor how believing in his Word wrought peace within my heart.

I know not what of good or ill may be reserved for me,
Of weary ways or golden days, before his face I see.

But I know whom I have believed. That and the light of Christ in my eyes are enough of a surety for me, no matter how much else I might want to know.

Of course, in half an hour or so I had to pull over to refill my coffee mug. Emotional processing is hard work, and requires lots of caffeine. I parked in an 'emergency parking zone,' because a lack of coffee is an emergency, and lost the light of Christ in the process. I've been told before that caffeine addiction is a problem, but I never thought it was on a theological scale.

I found Monk's arrangement of Blessed Assurance to be my soundtrack for driving in the dark.

This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior, all the day long.

*And really, as many times as I've heard that phrase, I can't imagine a cat in moccasins being all that sneaky.