There’s no friend like an old friend, and 45 years of friendship definitely qualifies.

Nine of us college pals are here at the cottage for a few days, 405 years of accumulated friendship and good times. We met at Wheaton College in the mid-sixties and lived in off-campus housing together senior year. That’s when we really became close, sharing all-night study gigs fueled by a brand new product, Diet Rite Cola. Looking back at pictures, you’d think we spent all our time fooling around rather than hunkering down over books.

One day Kathy decided we needed a pet and came home with three goldfish in a bowl. She named them Figgy, Figgy and Foo, and although the fish didn’t last very long, the name stuck. Eleven of us became the Figgy Figgy Foos, or the Figs, or just plain FFF.

In the 43 years since graduation, we’ve been diligent about getting together, meeting every three years for a three day weekend in different homes. The decades have shaped our lives in cities across America and one in Germany. We’ve ended up becoming a missionary, a dean of students, a pastor, an editor, a social worker, a computer consultant and several school teachers. Coming together every three years takes effort… completely worth it.

The longer we live, the more interesting our gatherings become. We’ve taken divergent paths, and when we come together to catch up on three year’s worth of stories, the conversation is rich. Email has made it easier to arrange our reunions, and today we even spent a few minutes huddled over a laptop watching our favorite YouTube video clips, howling with laughter. Wasn’t it just yesterday we learned what the letters PC meant?

And that’s what old people do. They reminisce and say, “It seems like yesterday.”

How can it be that we all went on Medicare this year? Why is it that many are retiring? How come we’re talking around health issues? Can we be that old already?

Tonight, as we got sore stomachs from raucous laughter playing “Catch Phrase,” we had as good a time as in our college days. Age didn’t matter. Longstanding friendship did.

Although having fun has been our consistent theme, we’ve had to get serious, too. Two of our number have already died, both from cancer. And now Nate, too, is gone. Although he wasn’t a Fig, he was an adjunct member just like the other husbands are, and he is missed. We’re well aware time does run out on earthly friendships and want to make the most of the ones we have left.

When the 11 of us left the college campus in 1967, none of us knew how long we’d remain pals. And tonight we concluded that although laughing and being goofy has kept us wanting more, the core reason for Fig-unity is our shared belief in Jesus Christ. He’s the constant, the one who is present at every gathering and most important to us as individuals. He’s the glue that holds us together.

We can’t deny we’ve gotten old, but we don’t mind, because God is the one keeping us going, and he is timeless.

“For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ ”(Acts 17:28)