And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going
Acts 20:17-38
When I first came to FPC in 1981 I found many new friends, such as Carol and Claudia and Marnie and Linda, who are still my friends. And then there was Ginny. The moment we met we started talking. We just seemed to click. (She’s in Pennsylvania now but we got on zoom the other day and picked up the conversation right where we’d left off years before , used up our 40 minute zoom time, signed back on and kept on going for another 30. That kind of friend.) Back in 1981 I thought, “so this is life as a Christian. So much more fun than I expected.” And then one day she said, “We’re leaving next week.” “Leaving to go where?” “Wherever Wycliffe Bible Translators sends us.” (it was Papua New Guinea.) “How long?” “As long as God calls us there.”(it was 15 years.) What? My new BFF is going half way around the world for years and years? I was devastated.
It turns out she and Henry had been looking forward to this moment most of their lives. Both had dedicated themselves to God’s service, and Bible Translation was what they had both been called to. In fact, I learned that the Christian life is full of “goodbyes.” People who love the Lord and are willing to go where He sends them have to say a lot of “goodbyes.” Carol watched Jenny go off to Laos, come back, get married and go off again to Kuala Lumpur, where Carol’s two beautiful grandchildren are living, so far from Bellingham. Sandy and Al sent Laura off to Mozambique. Chris and Brad sent Leah and her husband off to Kona on the Big Island, where their granddaughters are growing up. Karin and her husband came back from Lebanon to settle down, she thought, until he said, when she was 55, “Honey, would you like to go to China?” I have friends who raised 5 children in Thailand; they just got to visit their daughter in Egypt, where she is doing medical mission work among the refugees there. Rob and Eshinee Veith have traveled so often and to so many places that I lose track, all with the goal of seeing people come to the Lord.
We feel for the elders of Ephesus. “What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again.” They were among the first to learn what we Christians all must learn, that saying Goodbye is part of the Christian life. Although perhaps “see you again in Heaven” is a better way to phrase it. We do have that hope, after all.