Songs in the Night

Have you been there?

In Psalm 77, Asaph cries out with a heavy heart as troubling questions rob him of sleep. What strikes him especially hard is that, while he once knew how to sing “songs in the night,” those songs seem to be failing him now.

Such challenging “nights” aren’t unique to Asaph. Living under the cross this side of heaven, we all know discouragement. When we examine our lives with the unvarnished honesty only Christ’s forgiving grace can give us, we find ourselves even more discouraged. How far we—and all of God’s world—have fallen from his created design!

But these times of night don’t occur only for individuals. Right now, colleges and universities across the United States are experiencing more than a bit of a troubling night.

Three statistics confirm that reality. First, in 2019 there was a 25% oversupply of campus space in relation to student enrollment—and the pandemic made it worse. Second, over 500 colleges across the country have closed in the past 10 years, succumbing to declining enrollments and/or fiscal instability. Finally, the Great Recession of 2008 prompted a precipitous drop in our country’s birth rate. Births in 2020 were 20% below 2007. Beginning in 2026, colleges will face a 15% decline in available high school graduates.

MLC is not immune to these challenges. A walk through our residence halls reveals that our enrollment is significantly under capacity. Not only has synodical membership declined steadily since 1991, but the number of infant baptisms in our synod in 2022 was less than half the number just 10 years earlier.

Unless God grants significant growth to our synod very soon, the pool of WELS members graduating from high school will decline significantly in the next decade.

Yet our gracious, saving God—not statistics—remains in control of his world and his Church. His saving right arm is still “not too short to save” (Isaiah 59:1).

The key for MLC, in the midst of the dark realities of higher education, is to continue to “sing songs in the night.” We sing because we don’t navigate this night alone. We sing because God freely gives us wisdom and strength in Jesus. We sing because he provides us the night-vision—dare we say “Knight-vision”—of the certain glory to come!

The rest of this issue of InFocus will hold before you many such “songs in the night.” These are good-news stories, highlighting God’s blessings on the faithfulness of our faculty and staff, the work ethic of our students, the support of our alumni, and the generosity of our donors.

As MLC continues Pursuing Excellence Under the Cross, God enables us to sing these “songs in the night” with confidence. In fact, a little later in Psalm 77, Asaph gives us the lyrics to sing:

Your ways, God, are holy.
     What god is as great as our God?
You are the God who performs miracles;
     you display your power among the peoples.
With your mighty arm you redeemed
      your people,
the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.

Psalm 77:13-15

Indeed, it is God’s work we are doing. According to his love and wisdom, he will bless it as he sees fit!