Goodbyes and Reunions
As an adult child of divorce who also experienced the difficulties of being rapidly uprooted at an impressionable age and leaving behind all that was familiar, I have spent the majority of my life aching to sink deep roots, establish meaningful relationships, and then stay there forever.
A part of my soul has always longed to be interwoven with a landscape and community. To know every rock and tree and call it home, to know every face and story and call it home. It is part of the fabric of my character.
Whatever spirit of adventure and discovery that I have, it is only sweetened by the thought of having a true home from which to depart and to return.
What I am describing is the desire to deeply belong to a place and a people.
I am convinced as I age that this hunger will not and should not be fully assuaged on this side of eternity. God in his grace has used both seasons of belonging and seasons of sojourning to stoke the fire of my longing for heaven— my true home with my True God among my true people.
I am also convinced (it took time to arrive here) that the closest glimpse I will get of this home on this side of heaven is in the church.
Within the church, I am dwelling among the faces with whom I will be spending eternity. How amazing is that?
But then the Lord called me to shepherd a church that is planted in a military context. 30-40% of the brothers and sisters in Christ that the Lord brings into my local church community we can expect him to send out within a few years.
And thus there has been a new and persistent heartache— the repeated call to love and build beautiful and meaningful community with people to whom I know I will soon have to say goodbye.
All my defenses testify that it would be better to stay at an arm’s length than to willfully step into that kind of grief. I am tempted to pursue connection with those who best serve my desire to build a permanent community of belonging for myself right here and now on this side of heaven. I don’t want to say goodbye to people I love.
”If goodbye is inevitable, it is better not to love,” my wicked heart whispers.
In this defensiveness, the Lord has tenderly reminded me that earthly goodbyes within the church have given way to eternal belonging. Any good deposit we make in building biblical community will echo in eternity as we worship our God together in heaven. In 10,000 years, I might turn to a brother the Lord brought to my life in 2010 and recall, rejoice, and worship God for the way the Lord showed up in those days when we walked by faith and not by sight. What a glorious thought.
So when my church sends people out who have been deeply connected, it is good and right that we grieve at the loss. But we can also learn to rejoice. A painful goodbye testifies that God has brought forth the fruits of biblical community together. God is infinitely more interested in the church shining the example of Heaven’s community than we are, so we have no cause to doubt that if He has provided it for us before, He will continue to meet that need.
We rob ourselves of the opportunity to celebrate what the Lord has graciously given us if we rapidly leap to trying to fill and replace the voids and vacancies that pang our hearts when we lose a faithful member of our family. We can ache the goodbye, celebrate the coming reunion, thank Jesus for purchasing a permanent family, and thank God for letting us experience the fruits of biblical community on this side of eternity.
Next time you gather with your local church, look around. Soak up these faces, these smiles, these tears. These are your people and they travel with you to your shared home, fathered by your God.
That will be one heck of a reunion hug.
