![]() We both believe in Jesus He will bring us together in the meantime, “God be with you.” Will we ever get to eat deliciously grilled steaks at the same table again (my bestest friend grills the bestest steaks)? We have to trust and believe, “God be with you.” Will we ever, ever be together again? I don’t know, “God be with you.” I really want to be with you, but it’s not possible, “God be with you.” ![]() Maybe we need to recover that sense of God’s presence in our partings. That deeper analysis is the province of etymologists–not a lowly blogifier like me. Perhaps, in that day, the words “good” and “God” naturally interchanged among a people who were generally godlier minded. Later “good” was substituted for “God” and “be with you” was contracted to “bye.” Perhaps the replacement of “good” for “God” was the first incursion of political correctness. And, any nincompoopish (yes, that is a word) soul with an Oxford Dictionary app on their iPad can tell you that the word derives from an Old English expression: “God be with you.” FaceTime–not an option.īeing a bit of a geek, I wondered what’s up with the word, “Goodbye.” It seems, on the face of it, so oxymoronic–so self-refuting. But they all felt the pain of knowing that, this side of eternity, they would likely not encounter Paul again. Paul gives them a little speech (well, being Paul, it was not so little) and in the middle of the speech (v.25) he says, “Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again.”Īt the end of Paul’s speech (12 verses later), the Ephesian elders are found weeping as they “embraced him and kissed him.” In verse 38, “What grieved them most was statement that they would never see his face again.” These were not faithless bumpkins they knew the Gospel they were church leaders they knew the promised reality of being present together with the Lord. I am reminded of the Apostle Paul’s farewell to the Ephesian elders in Acts, Chapter 20. To be sure, these days the “farness” is somewhat mitigated by technology… texts… tweets… instant messages… emails… FaceTime… Skype… status updates… regular, old-fashioned, you know, phone calls… they all have the potential to rinse some of the pain away. The immediacy possible with geographic proximity is going to give way to some unknown something else that, no matter what, will not have “nearness” as its baseline. The hurt springs from the realization that you can’t just hop in the car and cruise on over to their place to hang out (even if you didn’t do it as often as you wanted to/should have). ![]() In my experience saying “Bye” to people you care about is rarely “Good.” It always seems to hurt–a lot. Just as dinner was winding down my bestest ever friend said, “This is hard.” A text from him later in the week echoed, “This is hard.” And it is excruciating to say, “Goodbye,” to someone who you know would not even blink if you said, “I need you please come.” The kind of friends who make it hard (really, very hard) to say, “Goodbye.”Īnd we are saying goodbye this week. The kind of friends who work their way through the dung and to the other side of the hurt and find that the place that had been broken has healed and become stronger than it was before. The kind of friends who, when you hurt them (and I had hurt them ever so badly) find themselves still (even as the hurt shreds their hearts) willing to ponder the possibility of restoration… The kind of friends with whom the relationship is forged in the trenches of shared ministry… We were having dinner the other night with some very good (bestest ever) friends.
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