Newsletter May 21, 2008
From the Senior Pastor. . .
In the 1966 Covenant College yearbook, the “Tartan,” there is a picture of a lovely young lady in a dress, her hair stylishly flipped, retrieving her luggage from the trunk of a car, preparing to begin her first year of college.
I don’t remember seeing her that day. But I do remember becoming friends during the first semester of our freshmen year.
I invited another young lady to be my date for Covenant College’s winter banquet, which was held on the upper floor of the Read House. But I must confess that I spent more time talking with the young lady seated to my left, than I did talking with my date who was seated to my right. The young lady to my left and the young lady in the “Tartan” photo were one and the same.
Back in those days, the first semester didn’t end until after Christmas break. You’d go home for Christmas, come back for two weeks of classes and a week of finals, and then have a week off between semesters.
During the semester break, I stayed in Chattanooga to have my knee operated on at Erlanger. While I was recuperating, I received several get well cards, and two of them were from the young lady who was seated to my left during the winter banquet and appears in the “Tartan” photo.
When the second semester began, I asked her out for a date. And then on a second. And then a third. Soon, we were an “item.”
Within a few weeks I knew that she was the one. I told her I loved her and asked her to marry me. We were freshmen in college. I was 19. She was 18. But I’d never been more sure of anything in my life. And it only took her two or three weeks . . . one . . . two . . . three long weeks. . . to respond positively to my declarations of love and proposal of marriage.
I told my parents and wrote to her parents to ask their permission and blessing. That was a little scary. When she first began to write home about me, her father had said that he hoped his daughter wouldn’t become overly interested in anybody named “Render.”
Of course, he was only joking . . . I think.
At any rate, her parents gave us their permission and blessing, as did my parents. And in December of 1966, in the middle of our sophomore year, we were engaged. We married in May of 1968 at the end of our junior year. By God’s grace and with abundant help from others, we both graduated from Covenant in May of 1969.
That was 40 years ago. As you receive this Newsletter, Linda and I will be returning from a short anniversary getaway.
I am blessed. After forty years, Linda merits sainthood. I cannot possibly imagine a better helpmate. A wonderfully supportive wife, a gentle mother of six, an adored grandmother of twenty . . . a loving daughter, a caring daughter-in-law, a beloved sister, aunt, and cousin . . . a compassionate friend, an admired woman.
All of which is because she is loved of the Lord, and the passion of her life is to honor Him in all she does and says.
“Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: ‘Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.’ Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.” (Proverb 31.28-31)
Pastor Caines