goodbye

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Goodbye End; Hello Beginning

The end has come, but the beginning will start soon. … I never would have said those words years ago, but they are fitting today.

Goodbye end; hollow beginning

Today we close up our cottage for the season and we won’t be back until the end of April or beginning of May – that is six months from now. 

… The end of the cottage season has come to a screeching halt. There will be no more trips up here for six months. 

Today I will put the finishing touches on the close. The final task before turning off the power and locking doors is blowing out the water lines. 

They say that everyone has the same amount of time, that we all have 24 hours in a day, and 365 days in a year. 

We all work within those time constraints, but I tell you that time seems shorter for me these days. That 24 hours for me is not like 24 hours for a 7 year old. 

I remember being young and trying to savour every bit of my birthday because the next birthday seemed forever away. 

I remember thinking that grade two was never going to end and that grade three would never happen. Well, that’s partly because I repeated grade two.  

But there was this sense that, in some cases, time seemed to stand still. 

When the summer was over, it wasn’t coming back any time soon.

But that is not the case now. Today we will lock up the cottage and walk away from it for the entire winter … but that time seems to go so fast now. 

It won’t be long before we are back at this place. The leaves will be budding on the trees and not falling off as they are now. Everything will be turning green, new and fresh, and not brown, yellow, red and orange. 

Now all the foliage is decaying – I filled three big paper yard bags full of shredded leaves yesterday. When we come back the grass will be growing at a rapid rate.

Between now and then, the same amount of time passes as it always has. But the time seems to pass more quickly.

I know this because it doesn’t seem that long ago that we were making our first trip of the season to the cottage. 

And that time has gone so quickly!

Yesterday I shot some video with my drone – sort of my way of saying goodbye to our retreat place (you can check it out here).

That video will stay on my YouTube channel all winter long and through the spring. But any time I look at those clips I will not be thinking of that day, but about the days to come. 

Maybe that is why time seems to go so fast. We are looking forward to what is coming up ahead. 

Children live in the moment and time seems to stand still for them. Adults look to tomorrow and time seems to move at lightning speed.

Maybe we need a little balance between living in the moment and looking to tomorrow.

Here’s the thing: Christ will come one day and this life we have had here will seem like it was a flash in time. The eternity that lies ahead of us, what we have anticipated for so long, will stretch before us as endless days to be savoured moment by moment. We will be able to live in the moment AND look forward to tomorrow … provided that we have here and now made the commitment to follow Jesus and submit our lives to Him.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How would living in the moment help you? Leave you comments and questions below.

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You Say Goodbye; I Say Hello

Yesterday I said goodbye to some friends who were moving away – friends I was used to seeing on a weekly basis, and whose home I was in every other week. … Now I won’t see them for at least a few years.

say goodbye, say hello

This morning I was reflecting on that. 

I’ve said goodbye to many people in the past, mostly when they have left my town. But there have been a few times when I’ve left town.

At the time of saying goodbye there’s usually lots of business to attend to, other people trying to say farewell, etc. There really is no time to think and contemplate about leaving, about a goodbye.

The goodbye is also not equally the same for both those leaving and those staying. 

For the ones who are going away, they leave for something new, something different. Their leaving comes with an element of excitement, unknown, even nervousness.  

But there is none of that for those who are staying and are saying goodbye. Everything stays the same for them. There is just the loss of someone leaving.

It’s kind of like eating your favourite ice cream cone. (For me, that would be a scoop of Rocky Road ice cream on a sugar cone.) 

As you take a lick, a good sized piece of ice cream comes loose and falls to the ground. If you’re like me, you hate that because you want to eat every bit. You’ve be anticipating it; you’ve been savouring the taste of that ice cream. And then to lose a piece of it, it’s hard not to be disappointed. 

Ever thought of somehow licking up that ice cream from the ground even though it’s past the 5 second rule? 

The reality is you still have most of that cone to enjoy and to delight your taste buds with. You are only losing out on a small piece. … But still the thought of missing even a morsel of that favourite ice cream borders on a deep feeling of loss. 

The experts say that the world has shrunk with technology and with travel being so accessible, but that is merely conceptual. The reality is distance changes everything. 

I remember when we moved from Edmonton to Kingston. Two weeks after we arrived our son turned five years old. 

When we discussed with him what he would like for his birthday he said he just wanted his friend, Joel, to attend the party. 

Well, Joel lived in Edmonton, but Mike couldn’t understand why his parents wouldn’t just drive him over, or put him on a plane so he could be there for his big day. Mike didn’t make the connection that it took us five days to drive across the country, staying in hotels each night. 

So until someone actually invents the Star Trek transporter, distance will not been circumvented. When you say goodbye, there is an element of missing one’s presence that lingers.

Here’s the thing: Though we will say goodbye to everyone in our life, even if it is only for an hour, we never say goodbye to God. He is always with us, even when we move. No matter where we go, He is there. So don’t act like there is a distance between you and Him. Speak to Him regularly throughout your day. Don’t treat Him like He’s gone away. And certain don’t pretend like He is not there with you. With God you always say “hello” and never “goodbye”.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Who would you like to say hello to today? Leave your comments and questions below.

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Final Goodbye To A Dear Friend

Yesterday I heard of the passing of a good friend and colleague, Ian Ross. Well, he wasn’t a colleague in the strict sense of the word, but he definitely was a partner in ministry.

IanRoss

My introduction to Ian came 30 years ago. I had just been hired as the youth pastor at the church he attended, Beulah Alliance Church in Edmonton.

Along with a youth group, I inherited several volunteer youth leaders. Ian and his wife, Audrey, were two of them. At first we spent time getting to know each other, which consisted of mostly hanging out at restaurants after Friday night activities.

We got along amazingly. Ian and Audrey had a love for the students in the youth group like nobody else. It’s rare to find commitment on a volunteer level like these two had.

The most startling thing about our relationship, and their ministry with teens, was that they had already raised their family and their youngest child was just graduating out of the youth group.

These two relics in terms of youth ministry were only a handful of years younger than my parents – and I was 29 at the time.

Over the years I found Ian to be a quiet mentor. What I mean is he wasn’t pushy. He listened, observed and when he thought I needed some advice … well, I was all ears.

He was like that with the teens. He participated in everything the students did; they loved him and listened to him when he had a word for them.

We did some crazy things together over the eleven years I was in that church: staying up all night with the group when we had all-nighters, taking kids to the hospital when we went tubing, setting up the gym or the whole church for big events.

He got roped into all kinds of stunts, skits, and situations that most people his age would have had nothing to do with.

Ian, however, just rolled with it all. The thing that Ian did best, and did the most, was hang out with our teens, and interact with them. He encouraged them, teased them, instructed them, impressed upon them, teased them (did I say that already?).

He befriended them.

There is not a student who went through that church who didn’t like Ian, who didn’t respect Ian, who didn’t learn something from Ian … well, maybe Kurt … That one night cost Ian a couple of years, I think. At any rate, he was greyer, if you can get greyer when you already have completely grey hair.

For me, Ian was a mentor, a partner, a friend – oh, and a golfing buddy. I have only seen him a few times in the last 19 years but I’ve never felt that we were far from each other.

Ian was one of those friends you could pick up with like you saw him yesterday, even when it had been more like 10 years.

My heart is saddened that he is not here, so I will just look forward to when I see him again in heaven.

Here’s the thing: We don’t find a lot of Ian Rosses in the world. But God uses people like him. And I would challenge you, if you knew Ian, or know someone like Ian, to decide today that you will seek to make your life count for God like Ian Ross made his life count. Our world, our churches need more people like the Rosses leaving their fingerprints on everything and everyone they touch.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Who has been a mentor in your life? Leave your comment below.