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# How great thou art
- URL: https://www.rubyskitchentable.com/how-great-thou-art/
- Published: 2026-08-23T10:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-23T09:59:59.000Z
- Author: Ruby Hayes
- Tags: devotional, Week 13, #100, #prayer, #medium

*"Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you." — 2 Corinthians 13:11*

I was at church this morning and the summer is almost over and I could feel it in the room.

The congregation was still small. Twelve people, maybe thirteen. But there was something different about the smallness today. It was not the thin August smallness of the last few weeks, the smallness that says people are at the lake or the beach or sleeping in. It was the smallness of a church that is about to get bigger. The choir rehearsal notice is still on the bulletin board. Someone had added a Rally Day flyer underneath it. September is coming, and the church knows it before the calendar does.

Pastor Holloway preached on putting things in order. I do not remember the details because I rarely remember the details. What I remember is the feeling of the sanctuary at the end of August, when the stone walls are warm and the fans are on and the light through the east window has the quality of a season that is almost finished. The light does not look like July light or even like the light two weeks ago. It looks like the light of a year that is turning.

We sang "How Great Thou Art" and I sang it the way I sing all the old hymns, which is from the place in my chest where the words live. Then sings my soul. I have sung that line in this sanctuary for forty-seven years and the line has not worn thin. The mystery is that it keeps being true. My soul keeps singing, even on the mornings when I do not feel like singing, and the singing is not about feeling. The singing is about showing up and opening your mouth and letting the words come from wherever they have been waiting.

Edna was there. Mrs. Patterson was there. The Millers were in their row. The woman who lost her husband was not there, and I noticed her absence the way you notice a chair that is usually occupied and is not. I will pray for her tonight.

I drove home with the windows down and the air was late August air and I thought about September and the children coming back and the garden going to bed and the year continuing to turn underneath the heat, and I was glad to be here, in this house, at this table, in this life that is ordinary and faithful and mine.

*Lord, the summer is almost done. Thank you for every morning of it.*