About a month ago, my little brother and I were driving through the hills of western Pennsylvania, watching the fiery colors of autumn flash by the windows. We had just left the home of one of my college roommates and were on our way to visit another roommate in Maryland. To pass the time, my brother popped the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack into the car’s CD player. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, then you know that I’m a big Lord of the Rings fan. J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories are very close to my heart. So I was already feeling pretty darn wistful by the time the final track – “The Breaking of the Fellowship” – rolled around. As I listened to the melancholy strings and brass, I pictured Frodo and Sam leaving their companions and rowing away across the Anduin river. The time that my brother and I had spent with my friend in Pennsylvania had been wonderful, chock-full of laughter and goofiness and reminiscing. Now, like Frodo’s time with Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, it was at an end. I had wept when I said goodbye to my college roommates after graduation. Now, after saying goodbye again, I felt a familiar ache in the pit of my stomach. In spite of my attempts to elude and forestall it, farewell had tracked me down again, creeping up behind me with all the inevitability of autumn’s chill.

I’ve been thinking about goodbyes a lot recently. This autumn has been a season of changes for me and for my family, transitions mirrored in the tumbling leaves, swaying corn stalks, and honking geese winging their way southward across the sky near our home. Early in October, my little sister and her new husband hurried off to start their honeymoon as friends and family showered them with leaves. Later that month, my grandparents rented a U-haul and moved back home to Florida to resume the ministry that God was calling them to. As October drew to a close, I found myself saying goodbyes to two beloved friends on the East Coast. Throughout November, I said more goodbyes to residents who were graduating from the group home where I work. Recently, I’ve been repeat-listening to Ben Shive’s amazing album The Ill-Tempered Klavier, a collection of songs that reflect on love, loss, the passing of time, and the changes of growing old.

I’ve always hated saying goodbye, whether it’s parting with loved ones or watching the sky darken after sunset. Yet, in spite of my frustration, goodbyes remain a fact of life. I guess I’d better learn to make my peace with them. But how to do it? I’m in the thick of this struggle and don’t have all the answers yet. However, I hope that what I’m learning along the way can be an encouragement to you if, like me, you’ve wrestled with the bittersweet burden of leaving and letting go.

Nothing for the Ache

Goodbye is an intruder who we were never meant to meet. In the opening chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, we learn that the first humans were created to experience intimacy with each other and with their Maker. They were also given a shared calling to till the land and care for the creatures that God had entrusted them with. However, when Adam and Eve chose to rebel against God, they started to experience multifaceted brokenness: distance from their Creator, disunity in their relationship with each other, and exile from the garden they called home. Ultimately, humanity began to experience death, which is the ultimate goodbye. Loneliness and distrust had erupted into relationships that were once marked by harmony.

The painful goodbyes that we experience are the rubble of that ancient rebellion, the aftershock of an explosion which has reverberated through history into the present. We all long for lasting fulfillment. We yearn for relationships that will stand the test of time. But despite our best efforts and intentions, time continues its relentless forward march. Old friends move on, loved ones pass away, and trusted companions let us down. Thrills subside and highs give way to hangovers. All songs and tales must come to an end. Although our world has had thousands of years to get its act together, society continues to fall apart at the seams, ravaged by violence, oppression, deception, and greed. Scientists even predict that our expanding universe is over-stretching itself, chugging toward an inevitable heat death that will grind stars and planets to a halt. Whether or not we acknowledge these gloomy forecasts, we know the ache of loss all too well. It never seems to get easier. As the Lumineers sing, “Nobody knows how to say goodbye. It sounds so easy ’till you try.”

Despite the fact that we in America have more opportunities to distract, amuse, and comfort ourselves than ever before, the consistently high rates of drug abuse, divorce, and suicide in our nation testify to the truth that deep loneliness and heartache persist, rumbling underneath us like a fault line. Again and again, after trying and failing to make our pleasure and contentment last, we find that the things of this world don’t satisfy our longings. We feel the weighty truth expressed in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place where the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say” (Ecclesiastes 1:7-8). We discover, as Ben Shive sings, that

There’s nothing for the ache,
the groaning of a heart about to break.
You’ll notice when you lie in bed awake,
feeling like you’re falling.

Beyond the Last Goodbye

While we cannot escape goodbyes, the anger and sorrow that we feel when they come upon us are signposts pointing towards hope.  Despite their intransigence, loss and death are impostors that have wounded God’s good creation, and for all impostors there comes a reckoning. Goodbye will not have the last word. 

The same Bible that begins with a heartbreaking goodbye ends with a joyous reunion. In the Book of Revelation, we read about the promise of a new heavens and a new earth, where God will once again dwell with his people. Ironically, this coming renewal of all things was made possible by a farewell: Jesus Christ’s self-sacrificial death for sinners. When Jesus’ followers watched as their friend’s emaciated body was stowed in a tomb, they said goodbye to their hopes for a promised Messiah, the long-awaited prophet-king who would rescue them from sin and oppression. But when, on Easter Sunday, Jesus appeared to them again, as flesh-and-blood alive as he had ever been, they realized with bewildered joy that something had changed. Reality had been shaken by a seismic shift. Death itself had been mortally wounded. Resurrection – new life – was the destiny of God’s people. If Christ could rise from the dead, then all that had been broken by the Fall could be restored – in society, in the human heart, and in the very soil itself.

The hope kindled by Jesus’ resurrection reminds God’s people that even the passing of time will be redeemed. The apostle Paul tells us that “this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18). Like everything else in this world, our suffering will pass away. Beyond the last goodbye, just over the horizon, Jesus is preparing a lasting home for his people – a kingdom where truth and justice will soar like banners over a rampart. As someone wise once said, “Our future is as bright as the promises of God.”

Freed to Let Go

In light of this hope, how should we live in this land where goodbyes remain a fact of life? For starters, our relationship with our Creator and Savior has got to come first. This is a tough one for me. Jesus said this to his disciples: “He who loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me. And he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37-38). If I’m honest with myself, I’ve got to admit that I invest a lot more time and energy in my relationships with other people than in my relationship with the One who made me. I care far more about what others think of me than about what God thinks of me. I try desperately to please people, and when inevitably I let them down or don’t measure up to my own expectations, I beat myself up on the inside. When relationships change or dissolve, I feel bitter and irritable, questioning why God’s plan for my life doesn’t match my ideals and why the people around me don’t either. I yearn for lasting community, for a place where I’m known and loved as I am. But to be honest, most of the time I just feel lonely. 

Whether by their own faults or by the unexpected changes of time, the people we love will let us down. Truth is, they were never meant to satisfy our deepest longings or alleviate the ache. They weren’t designed to carry the weight of our expectations, and expecting them to do so does them a deep disservice. Pastor Tim Keller once gave a lecture at my college’s chapel, and I remember him saying that if we build our identity on our relationships with others, then we end up placing a crushing burden on them and on ourselves. Too many marriages rupture because of selfishness – unrealistic and unreasonable expectations of what the other partner should be doing to make us happy. Singer-songwriter Jon Foreman of the band Switchfoot recognized this danger and discussed it in relation to his song “Enough to Let Me Go”:

In our barcode media, love is often portrayed as consumption. As consumers in a commercial-driven culture we can begin to view other souls as objects, or potential cures for our deepest fears and insecurities. “Perhaps if I found the right lover I would no longer feel this deep existential despair.” But of course no human soul could be the Constant Other, the face that will never go away. Only the infinite can fill that role. But the silence can be deafening. It’s a fearful thing to be alone… “I can’t live without you” – “I would die if you ever left me” – These are not the songs of love. These are the songs of consumption.

We were created to desire a relationship with our Creator, and no human relationship can satisfy that desire. If we expect people to fulfill our needs in an ultimate sense, then we’re setting ourselves up for crushing disappointment. Alternatively, if our self-worth is rooted in the love of God, which doesn’t change, then our love for others becomes the overflow of that faithful, self-sacrificial love. Resting in the unconditional love of God, we are freed to see people as they are – as broken, complicated souls capable of great evil and great goodness. We are freed to love people as they are and not as we want them to be, which is exactly how God loves us. Rather than stifling people, we are freed to give them space to grow and learn, freed to let them try and stumble and get up again on their individual journeys. Like a mother who watches her child leave home, we are freed to let them go, knowing that we can’t hold them forever and trusting that they are carried in the hands of God. Liberated from the burden of expectations, we can ask of others the question that Jon Foreman asks in his song: “Do you love me enough to let me go?”

Here There Be Dragons

Living in the light of resurrection hope, we can savor each good thing that we experience in this world as a foretaste of the glory to come. Knowing that the destiny of this fractured world is not merely destruction, but re-creation, we can delight in sunrises and sunsets, whales and wolves, music and movies, constellations and cornfields. The good things that God has made will not be lost. Resurrection isn’t a helicopter air-lifting us out of this crumbling kingdom. It’s a seed planted in the heart of the earth, an antidote coursing through the soil and groundwater until all is green again. 

Art is a wonderful gift to creatures bound by time. By challenging us to pause and notice, to look for beauty in the seemingly ordinary, art draws our gaze past the gifts themselves to the Giver and Artist who fashioned them for our delight. This world isn’t just a backdrop for human activity. This world was made to be wondered at, to be adventured in. Here there be dragons. If we keep our eyes open, we’ll never run out of reasons to sing praises. “Earth’s crammed with heaven, ” wrote poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “and every common bush afire with God.” Rich Mullins recognized something similar when he sang: 

There’s more that dances on these prairies than the wind
and more that pulses in the ocean than the tide.
There’s a love that is fiercer than the love between friends,
more gentle than a mother’s when a baby’s at her side.

There’s a loyalty that’s deeper than mere sentiments
and a music higher than the songs that I can sing.
The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance
I owe only to the giver of all good things.

We’re finite beings with only so much time to give. We won’t get to do all the things that we’d like to do, or have the impact on the world that we might hope to have. There are only 24 hours in a day, and darn it, some of those hours require sleep (freshman year of college notwithstanding). Each day is a gift to be treasured, a song of intense beauty made all the more precious by its finitude. As Ben Shive sings, “Every day is the day to say goodbye.” Yet if no good thing is lost, then the acts of love that we undertake in the present will have eternal consequences, both for us and for those we serve. Seemingly small and insignificant acts of kindness may have stronger repercussions than we could ever have imagined. When we love people by telling them about Jesus, we’re both warning them about the reckoning that is coming and inviting them to join in the victory dance – the eternal celebration made possible by Christ’s death and resurrection. None of this love will go to waste. In Christ, we’re able to live like each day like its our last, while knowing in our bones that it isn’t. As Andy Gullahorn sings in his song “The Other Side,”

When that day comes, don’t look back.
Love will be the bags you pack
for the other side.

On and On and On

If we keep our eyes and hearts open, God has a way of ambushing us with hope, stoking the fires of our souls with small moments of magic that remind us of his promises and enable us to keep going. As my brother and I drove through the Pennsylvania autumn with “The Breaking of the Fellowship” thrumming in our speakers, the road leveled off and the hills before us gave way to an expanse of brilliant blue sky, framed like a photograph between walls of rock. Listening to the sawing of strings and the muffled thunder of drums, gazing up into that endless sky, I was reminded of a quote by C.S. Lewis that I had read a long time ago: “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” While saying farewell to my friend in Pennsylvania had been painful, I was excited by the ways I’d seen God working in his life. The goodbyes that my college roommates and I had said to each other after graduation had made possible new beginnings for all of us – new work, new relationships, new adventures bringing new struggles and new joys. Like a shoot from a buried seed, new life had sprouted from loss.

There are moments when I wish I could turn back the clock, freeze the frame, and forestall the future. I struggle to believe that what’s ahead is better than what’s behind. Lord, help my unbelief. However, there are other moments when God pulls the curtain back a little bit, just enough to let me see some horizon. When that happens, I’m reminded that just as autumn’s chill is inevitable, springtime is inevitable too. I’m reminded that the Kingdom is coming, that through Christ it has already begun, and that no force of Hell can stop it. I’m reminded that, as Ben Shive sings, “Love is the reason the past is gone and the world turns on.” Hallelujah. Come, Lord Jesus.

I can think of no better way to end these ramblings than with yet another Ben Shive lyric:

Do you remember, when the morning fills the sky,
how all our darkest dreams surrender to the coming of the light?
And when I brush aside this curtain, I’ll find you shining like the dawn.
Beyond the ending of this world, we’ll go on and on and on.

One of my earliest memories is of my dad reading to my brothers and me before bedtime. I remember laying propped up on my elbows, listening as Dad worked his way through old paperback copies of Watership Down and The Fellowship of the Ring. As he read, my head swirled with images of dark forests where strange beasts lurked, of weary travelers marching with swords and shields slung over their shoulders, of dragon caves buried deep in the bones of the mountains. Though some of the details in the stories went over my head, I still felt them stirring something inside me: a wild longing to pack my bags, lace up my tennis shoes, and take off into the unknown with a band of trusty companions. I wanted to be part of something bigger than myself. I wanted to pick up a sword and fight alongside the good guys (and I spent many hours trying to do so by attacking my brothers with a plastic lightsaber). I wanted to join the fellowship on their quest.

However, looking back on the years that followed those early tales, I’ve realized that most of my life has actually been a quest for fellowship.

My search for intimate community played itself out in different ways as I grew up. In elementary school, it was an effort to connect with other kids through storytelling: wacky skits and puppet shows and a hand-drawn fantasy game that my friends and I played at recess (my own version of Dungeons & Dragons, where battles for the fate of the world were decided by a paperclip spun around the pointy end of a pencil). In middle school, it was an inseparable friendship with a buddy at church, built around skateboarding and comic art and goofiness, and then a slow drifting apart as his parents divorced and I started struggling with anxiety and depression. In high school, it was a restless attempt to win people’s approval with my performance in academics, sports, theater, and choir. In college, it was the unexpected discovery of a different kind of community, which was strengthened by vulnerability – a group of broken people who gradually became family. Now, post-college, it’s been a process of saying goodbyes, meeting new friends, and wondering what community might look like in the months and years to come.

What does true fellowship involve? Why do some friendships thrive while others fall apart or disappear? What does it look like to cultivate community in uncharted territory? These questions have been on my mind a lot recently. I don’t have all the answers yet (a shocking turn of events), but I’ve learned a couple lessons along the journey through the wisdom of others and my own knuckle-headed attempts to love and be loved. I hope these ramblings can be food for thought and an encouragement to you wherever you’re at in your own quest for community. Here goes nothin’…

The Given Life

“My friends ain’t the way I wish they were
They are just the way they are.”
– Rich Mullins, “Brother’s Keeper”

Many books, movies, and songs portray intimate friendship as something that happens instantaneously, like awkwardness in a gathering of middle schoolers. You cross paths with someone whose interests, personality, and values seem to align perfectly with yours, clean as a cookie cutter, and before you know it, you’re inseparable.

We all long for close relationships with people who really understand us. We yearn for unbreakable, Frodo-and-Sam-type bonds with friends who will stick by us through thick and thin, come hell or high water. However, while there may be some instances where this kind of friendship springs up quickly and easily, often it seems to elude us. Old friendships dissolve with time and distance, or we’re hurt and neglected by people we trusted, or the relationships that we do have never seem to move beyond superficial things. All of a sudden we feel lost and lonely, wondering if anyone around us really knows or values us. While I’ve experienced seasons of deep, strong friendship, I’ve also experienced painful seasons of loneliness. Some of those seasons were the result of my own foolish choices, while others were the result of things outside my control. When storms hit and wash away familiar ground, how do we cope?

Once, while leading a Bible study in my college dorm, I compared the friendship of King David and Jonathan (1 Samuel 19-20) to the friendship of Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings, hoping to make a point about the importance of finding friends who would remain loyal through life’s hardships. One of the members of the group, a guy named Paul, made a comment that has stuck with me ever since. He said that rather than searching for friends like Frodo and Sam, he had chosen to focus on being that kind of friend to others. His words rang true, touching on the critical distinction between true fellowship and the type of friendship that our culture tends to elevate.

Whether we realize it or not, we’re constantly pressured to be self-centered in our selection of friends. If we’re not careful, our society’s worship of efficiency, status, and comfort all too easily creeps into our relationships. We befriend people who agree with our opinions, who elevate our social status, who make us feel comfortable, and who tell us what we want to hear. On the other hand, we avoid like the plague people who challenge our views, who have nothing to offer us, who irritate us, and who make us feel awkward. We’re taught to chase after friendships that are idealized, where conflicts and sharp edges are smoothed over with the ease and glitter of a Hallmark rom com. In the long run, the result of this selfishness is discontentment. When old friends drift away and the people around us don’t meet our expectations, we become bitter. We start comparing our dwindling, imperfect circles of friends to the perpetually smiling faces on our TV screens, aching for what we don’t have.

What we tend to forget in these periods of discontentment is that the world is a whole lot bigger than us. As poet Wendell Berry put it, “We live the given life, not the planned.” Life has a way of throwing curveballs at us and confounding our plans with plot twists.We can’t pick-and-choose the people who enter our lives any more than we can pick-and-choose where we’re born, who are parents are, or what Hogwarts house we’re in (unless you’re a certain lad with a lightning-shaped scar, of course). Even in the communities that we choose to involve ourselves in, we find ourselves surrounded by people we didn’t put there – strangers whose temperaments, beliefs, and ways of life are often super different from our own. Every day, we rub shoulders with people whom we had no intention of meeting or knowing.

Fellowship isn’t selfish. It’s selfless. It’s not about figuring out what we can get from the people who fit neatly into our personal plans and projects. It’s about figuring out what we can give to the people who are already around us, whether we want them to be there or not. Jesus didn’t tell us to love the people who make us feel good. He told us to love our neighbors. And neighbors are often really good at making us want to flee our neighborhoods and go into hermitage. Likewise, real flesh-and-blood communities have a way of curb-stomping our dreams. As author Parker Palmer once wrote, community is the “place where the person you least want to live with always lives.”

When we stop thinking about what we can get from others and start thinking about what we can give, we can find contentment with the people who surround us at any given time. We can rest as seasons change and storms roll in, recognizing that relationships often change in surprising ways. Instead of expecting people to match our ideals,  we can approach people’s flaws and quirks with grace, remembering that our own lives have rough edges and broken places too. We can cultivate the soil of community, waiting patiently for the rain to fall and keeping at the work even when it doesn’t.

As a kid listening to The Fellowship of the Ring, I didn’t realize that the members of Tolkien’s fellowship didn’t choose to end up on their quest together. Sam, who was the gardener of the Baggins estate, joined Frodo at Gandalf’s request. The unlikely pair happened to run into Merry and Pippin and the rest of their companions en route to their destination. In my own life, some friendships that felt like they were destined to last forever have disappeared over time. On the other hand, some relationships that weren’t nearly as clean-cut have flourished. While my siblings and I often drove each other nuts growing up, they’ve gradually become some of my closest friends. Fellowship isn’t predictable or instantaneous. It takes time and work, and it grows gradually along the road with folks we just so happen to meet along the way.

The Small Stuff

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
– Confucius

In the summer and fall of my senior year of college, I had an amazing opportunity to live and study in an urban community on the island of Java, Indonesia. Although my neighbors were very poor, they managed to be extraordinarily generous and hospitable with what they had. When they weren’t working, people offered to help neighbors with their work, shared meals, and spent hours chatting, smoking cigarettes, and drinking sugary instant coffee together on their doorsteps (I mentioned that I liked black coffee once, and a neighbor told me that was what old people drank). Free time wasn’t a luxury to be hoarded; it was a gift to be shared. By watching their example and participating in their community, I learned a lot about the power of presence and time in relationship-building. Simply by making themselves available to be with each other, people created numerous opportunities for deep relationships to grow.

In a society where ways to distract ourselves from reality are everywhere, where it’s easy to be physically present without being attuned to what’s going on, the simple gifts of time and attentiveness are a big step towards fellowship. Hospitality, the act of opening our homes and helping people feel welcome there, is often said to be a lost art. As an art, it takes creativity and practice, and when done rightly, it’s beautiful and countercultural. One of the things that I admire most about my mom is her ability to make others feel welcome and cared for, whether it’s by crafting a delicious meal, setting up a space that feels inviting, or engaging visitors in conversation. These things seem small, but they’re deeply meaningful, and they add up over time. Fellowship is the product of many small actions and interactions.

My college years contained some crazy shenanigans. There was the time when my roommate Ben and I happened across a couple police officers while wearing ski masks. The annual school ball where another one of my roommates (who shall remain nameless….Dylan….) danced so passionately that he ripped his dress pants right up the back (fortunately Ben happened to have a spare trench coat handy). The time when my roommate Luke and I pretended to be Sherlock Holmes and Watson all around campus. The time when my friends threw me a Pride and Prejudice-themed birthday party and forced me to wear a giant paper dress. The five months of my time overseas when my roommates replaced me with a stuffed bear dressed in my clothing. These are wonderful memories that I’ll never forget. However, looking back, what I miss most about my college experience isn’t the crazy escapades. It’s the small stuff. It’s the many hours that my friends and I spent walking to classes together, grabbing meals in the cafeteria, watching movies, celebrating each other’s birthdays, and just sitting around talking in our apartments.

In The Lord of the Rings, the vast majority of the hobbits’ journey to Mordor didn’t consist of battles with Ringwraiths, orcs, and giant spiders. It consisted of walking. Lots and lots of walking. Walking though fields, walking through forests, walking through swamps, walking over mountains, walking through caves, walking through just about every kind of terrain imaginable. While all of this trekking through nature’s glories tends to be what makes casual readers of the books give up and/or fall asleep before they reach the good parts, it’s the many small moments between the big events that the adventurers’ bonds of loyalty were forged out of. And speaking of forging stuff…

The Hard Truth (a.k.a. The Virtues of Blacksmithing)

“You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another.” 
– Proverbs 27:17

My college roommates were really good at making me feel uncomfortable. Luke wasn’t afraid to be goofy or do things in public that were downright embarrassing. As a shy, self-conscious freshman, I found myself being dragged into some strange scenarios: being introduced by Luke to other freshmen as a taxidermy major, being yelled at by Luke in a crowded cafeteria until I relented and gave him a high-five, and listening to Luke belt out the Penn State fight song in public places at an unreasonable volume (I learned the lyrics to this song against my will). Ben was both a romantic soul and a great critical thinker who didn’t shy away from challenging statements that I’d made when he thought they were illogical or biased. As a result, we got into some pretty intense debates (you’re still wrong about Pride and Prejudice and Elihu, Ben). Dylan’s wild creativity and willingness to run with any scenario, no matter how ridiculous that scenario was, kept all of us on our toes.

Gradually, with time and extensive therapy, I came to see these unsettling actions as acts of love. Luke’s goofiness helped me meet new friends and chipped away at my self-consciousness, enabling me to drop my guard and be myself. Ben’s sharp thinking challenged me to evaluate my views, helping me recognize some of my biases and articulate my beliefs with more grace and thoughtfulness. His romantic encouragement also helped me work up the courage to go on dates. Dylan’s off-the-wall humor made me laugh more times than I can count. I’m a much different man than I was when I met these guys, and I can’t thank them enough for that.

At its heart, what distinguishes true fellowship from other kinds of friendship is a commitment to truth-telling. It’s easy to befriend someone who thinks like us, who echoes our opinions, and who laughs at our jokes. It’s a lot harder to befriend someone who gets under our skin, who asks us tough questions, or who calls us out when we start to make compromises. But we don’t grow through comfort. We grow through struggle. Steel has to be pummeled and subjected to blazing heat in order to be refined. True friends don’t tell us what we want to hear. They tell us what we need to hear, even though we may not want to hear it. Truth-telling can be uncomfortable and even painful in the moment, but it strengthens relationships over time. Your friend may feel insulted by your repeated attempts to warn him about the evils of being an Ohio State football fan. However, in the long run, he’ll be grateful for your advice when the world ends and Judgement Day rolls around.

There are different kinds of truth-telling, though. There are ways of telling someone a hard truth that tear them down, that make them feel small and inferior and incapable, and that highlight their shortcomings while glossing over our own. Our world has enough head-bashing and hypocrisy to go around. Alternatively, there are ways of telling someone a hard truth that build that person up, that are motivated by caring and focused on their well-being. This is what the apostle Paul described as “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). Truth and love are inseparable. According to pastor Tim Keller, “Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.”

Singer-songwriter Rich Mullins once said, “What I look for in friendship is someone who will beat you up. You get in a big fight and then the winner rides the other guy home on the bike.” I’m so grateful for friends like Ben, Luke, and Dylan who weren’t afraid to beat me up in love. When I said goodbye to them after graduation, what I told each of them was that they’d helped me believe the crazy truth of God’s love for me a little bit more, which is the best gift I can imagine. In their friendship, I glimpsed the love of the God who welcomes me unconditionally, just as I am, and who also continually challenges me to become the person I was made to be – more loving, more just, more merciful, more courageous. More like Jesus Christ.

The Great Reunion

“Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot always be torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do.”
– Frodo Baggins, The Return of the King

For me, one of the most moving scenes in The Lord of the Rings movies happens right before the end of The Return of the King. Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin have returned home from their world-saving quest and are sitting in the Green Dragon pub in Hobbiton, sipping mugs of ale. For a few moments, they stare at each other in silence, a wordless understanding of the adventures that they’ve shared passing between them. Then, all at once, they lift their mugs and tap them together. Every time I see that scene, I’m reminded of three men who I never intended to meet – Luke, Ben, and Dylan. I was in a bad place when I entered college – anxious, self-conscious, lonely, and broken by sin that I wanted desperately to hide. While I didn’t realize it then, I can see now that God gave me the ragtag band of companions I had always longed for. I found brothers who took me as I was, who walked with me through many small moments and several big adventures, and who told me the story of grace and redemption that I needed to hear. In the midst of my brokenness, I found a fellowship.

I’ve had to say my goodbyes. I hate doing it, and will until the day I die. I miss old friends deeply, and don’t have a clue where the road ahead will lead. But what I’ve learned, and what I hope you remember, is that life is unpredictable, and all the more beautiful for that; that community, with all of its messiness, is a gift; that our friendships are echoes of a greater Love, which doesn’t disappear, but pursues us wherever we go; and that there is a Great Reunion coming, where “goodbye” will be a forgotten word. When that time comes, if you’re in town and if there happens to be a pub in heaven, I hope you’ll stop by.

If you want to know what I was like as a kid, picture Hiccup from the movie How to Train Your Dragon, and that about sums it up. I was a shy, quiet daydreamer with the physicality of a string bean. Instead of listening to class lectures, I doodled pictures in the margins of my notebooks. My report cards throughout elementary school said the same thing in different ways: “Jesse’s a creative kid, and he’s doing well in his classes, but he struggles to pay attention.” Fourth grade was my first year of school in the United States. Having spent half my life growing up in Slovakia, a tiny country sandwiched in the heart of Eastern Europe, I was an outsider stepping into a foreign culture. I don’t remember much about that first year, and most of what I do remember revolves around recess (playing tag football and four-square, exchanging trading cards, feeling awkward around girls, etc.). But I do have a vivid memory of a sheet of paper that hung on the back wall of my fourth grade classroom – a sign-up sheet with the words “Author’s Chair” typed across the top. And I will always remember that classroom as a place where something that was buried deep in my soul stirred, shifted, and woke up for the first time. 

My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Fales, was a middle-aged woman with kind eyes and a loud, hearty laugh. She noticed early on that I enjoyed the writing assignments that she gave to our class. I would scribble words rapidly without pausing to think, stringing sentences together like my life depended on it. Mrs. Fales had decided that every Friday would be “Author’s Chair” day. Any kid who wanted to could sign up to read something they’d written aloud to the rest of the class. She encouraged me to sign up, and it was with great nervousness and anticipation that I scrawled my name on that paper. 

I still remember settling into the “Author’s Chair” chair and staring out at my classmates, who sat cross-legged on the carpet and stared back at me. I still remember the first story that I shared. It was called “Cyber-Dimension,” and was about ninja-style warriors who wore armored suits, lived inside the internet, and battled evil robots. I still remember the excitement that I felt as I told the story and realized that my classmates were enjoying it. All of a sudden, I didn’t feel so awkward anymore. Something in my cheesy tale had resonated with my classmates and connected me to them. I wasn’t alone. I had cracked open the closet of my weird ideas, and my classmates had affirmed what they saw there.

After that day, I signed up for Author’s Chair every single week. My fifth grade teacher continued the weekly story-sharing ritual. I wrote a story about some of the students in our class crash-landing a plane in the Sahara desert, struggling to survive, descending into madness, and then taking down a criminal mastermind who they happened to run across. Later, I wrote a story about some of the students in our class getting shipwrecked at sea, struggling to survive, and then taking down the same criminal mastermind who they happened to run across again. In sixth grade, I wrote two books about secret agents who saved the world with the help of a crime-fighting rabbit. My classmates took turns checking out the books and writing reviews on the back pages. With the encouragement of Mrs. Fales, I had discovered that I loved telling stories, that I was good at it, and that the stories I told connected me to a community. I wasn’t a paid author, and I hadn’t been published (thank goodness!). But I felt like I was, and I felt like I had.

Have you ever had a teacher who saw something in you that you didn’t see in yourself? Someone who affirmed a talent or passion in you and challenged you to bring it into daylight? Someone whose attention and affection made you feel valuable and capable? Words are incredibly powerful things. With words alone, we can shred someone’s self-esteem to the point where they wonder if their life is worth anything. With words alone, we can build someone up until they know in their bones that they are beloved. Hopefully you’ve had people in your life who have affirmed your unique personality, gifts, and dreams like this. But what about God? When you think about your Creator and hear his words, do you sense condemnation or affirmation? Do you feel built up or torn down? You may believe without a shadow of a doubt that you’re loved by your family and friends. But if you’re anything like me, believing that you are loved by God can be the hardest thing in the world. 

I love the apostle Peter. He’s my favorite character in the Bible. He’s also different from me in just about every way – reckless, headstrong, outspoken, and muscular (hauling loads of fish into a sailboat day in and day out was the ancient precursor of P90X). Chosen to be one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter loved his master fiercely and vowed to protect Jesus at all costs. He must have swelled with pride when Jesus foretold that he would become the leader of the early Christian church (Matthew 16:18). And yet, when soldiers arrested Jesus and dragged him off to be tortured and hanged as a traitor, Peter fled the scene with the rest of the disciples. Not only that, he denied ever knowing Jesus three times to save his own skin. In one of the most heartbreaking passages in the entire Bible, Peter made eye contact with Jesus from a distance as his master was being brought to trial by the Jewish authorities. Afterwards, he ran off and wept. He had failed his friend in the most miserable way possible.

Peter’s sorrow resonates with me on a deep level. Throughout my life, I’ve yearned to love God with reckless abandon. I’ve made numerous promises to follow him. I’ve worked hard to get to know him and to live like he wants me to live. And yet, over and over again, I’ve let him down. I’ve chosen to turn my back on him when it mattered most. I’ve wrestled with fear, doubt, selfishness, and addiction, making some horrible choices that have hurt me and those I love deeply. I’ve betrayed the God who I claim to love. Like Peter, I’ve run from Jesus, terrified that I might turn around make eye contact with him. If I did, what might I see in his eyes?

But (praise God!) Peter’s story doesn’t end there. Jesus was beaten and killed, and after three days he busted out of the grave – not as a disembodied spirit, but as a flesh-and-blood human being. While fishing with his friends, Peter saw the resurrected Jesus standing by the edge of the Sea of Galilee, and was so overcome with joy that he jumped out of the boat and flailed his way to the shore. After they had shared a meal, Jesus gave his friend some astonishing news: the mission that he had foretold for Peter had not changed. A traitor and a turncoat, Peter was still the man that God had chosen to lead and protect his people. With a track record of failure and absolutely nothing to offer, Peter was given a second chance. 

The pages of the Bible reveal that each and every one of us has, like Peter, betrayed the Creator of all things. We’ve chosen to rebel against God’s design for our lives by doing things that we knew were selfish, foolish, and hurtful. Even those of us who claim to be “born again” believers have continued to reject God’s commands and wound the people we love. Addicts to sin, we find ourselves doing stupid things out of habit. In his letter to Christians in Rome, the apostle Paul made this confession: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” (Romans 7:15, 24). While we often try to deny it, we’ve screwed up big time. We deserve condemnation. 

And yet, and yet, in spite of our broken promises, failed attempts, and sorry excuses, we have been affirmed. Later in his letter to Christians in Rome, Paul wrote: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Those of us who have received God’s offer of forgiveness have been accepted by God without a hint of disapproval. Elsewhere, Paul wrote: “For our sake, he (God) made him (Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Not only are we not condemned, but we are given a new status before God – a status that is based not on our performance but on Jesus’ faithful obedience. Now, when God looks at us, he doesn’t see the mess that we’ve made of our lives. He sees the self-sacrificial love of his beloved Son, Jesus Christ, for us. Because of Jesus’ death for our sins, we have a new identity. More words from Paul: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). 

If you’re anything like me, that last verse is both incredibly comforting and difficult to stomach. My gut instincts kick in, and I find myself saying, “Yes, but…” Yes, I am a new creation. But it doesn’t feel that way. Yes, I have been given the righteous track-record of Christ, which I could never hope to earn or deserve. But I am still so very unrighteous (I hope you heard that last bit in a surfer dude voice, like I did). I believe that I have a new identity, but I feel like the same selfish knucklehead that I’ve always been. God gave me a mission, and I’m still messing it up. How can I possibly be a new creation?

Several days ago, I watched a 2010 remake of the classic western film True Grit. In the film, a young girl named Maddie Ross (played by Hailee Steinfeld) enlists the aid of a U.S. Marshall named “Rooster” Cogburn (played by Jeff Bridges) to track down the man who shot and killed her father. Rooster is a grizzled law officer who is looked upon by his community as a has-been. Once a feared keeper of the peace, he’s now a trigger-happy, penniless old man who spends his days swigging booze and sleeping in a broken-down shack. Starry-eyed and full of hope, Maddie sees Rooster as the seasoned hero who can avenge her father’s murder. As the two journey through the wilderness of Arizona, Rooster develops an affection for Maddie and begins to tell her tales from his past. Once, he tells her about how he charged seven outlaws with the reins of his horse held between his teeth, firing with both of his revolvers. When Maddie shakes her head in disbelief, Rooster tells her: “You go for a man hard enough and fast enough, he don’t have time to think about how many’s with him; he thinks about himself, and how he might get clear of the wrath that’s about to set down on him.”

However, slowly and surely, Rooster lets Maddie down. He spends the money that she pays him on booze, and admits that his wife left him because of his perpetual drunkenness. Eventually, he gives up on the mission altogether, refusing to help Maddie anymore. While fetching water at a creek, Maddie stumbles across her father’s killer and is taken hostage by his posse. The leader of her captors threatens to execute her if Rooster doesn’t turn tail and head for home. Through a telescope, the outlaw sees Rooster riding away slowly over the brow of a hill. 

But then, minutes later, Rooster is back, facing four of the outlaws on horseback across a grassy clearing. While Maddie watches in astonishment, the elderly U.S. Marshall places the reins of his horse between his teeth, draws both revolvers, and rides across the field straight at her captors. 

I won’t tell you how the story ends, because it’s too good to spoil. If you haven’t seen it, you need to. But I will say that in an incredibly beautiful way, Rooster becomes the hero that Maddie had always hoped he’d be. A broken man burdened by regret, he risks everything for the girl he’s come to care about, a girl who looked beneath his smelly, drunken exterior and saw something noble – a beating heart still capable of “true grit.” Taking Rooster as he is, Maddie helps him recognize what he can become.  
I am deeply moved by this story, and the story of Peter, because in both tales I have seen the love of God that I so often struggle to believe. It’s a love that takes me just as I am, with all of my hang-ups and reservations. And yet, at the same time, it’s a love that looks forward to what I can become – a love that calls me into a new identity and a new mission. Yes, I’m still a knucklehead. But in a deeper and truer sense, in the eyes of my God, I am already a new creation. By the power of the Holy Spirit, I am being remade into the likeness of my Savior. When God looks at me, he sees the person that I will one day become. Looking at a shy, skinny fourth grader, he saw a beloved son with stories to tell. Looking at a recovering sinner, he sees a warrior capable of great courage and great love. 

I’ve felt like Rooster Cogburn numerous times throughout my life. Again and again, while I lay in the ruins of my poor choices, wallowing in guilt and mourning my mistakes, the Savior seeks me out. Gently and patiently, he stands me on my feet, brushes me off, places my revolvers back in my hands, and tells me, “I’ve still got a mission for you, and you’re still the man for the job.” I can’t be the man that he wants me to be in my own strength. God knows I’ve tried. But there is a promise that runs deeper than my doubts: “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus” (Phillipians 1:6). Amen and amen. 

How do you feel about change? Do new experiences fill you with fear or with excitement? Are you a Luke Skywalker, gazing out across the desert behind your uncle’s moisture farm and wishing you were someplace else (maybe pulverizing the forces of evil, or just going to Toshi station to pick up some power converters)? Or are you a Bilbo Baggins, perfectly content in the warmth of your hobbit hole and deeply unsettled by the thought of dwarves showing up uninvited in your kitchen?

I’m a mix of the two (Bilbo Skywalker), and I think most of us are both in varying degrees. Some changes scare us. Others excite us. We’re eager to let go of some things. Others we hold onto for dear life. I love traveling to new places, trying new things, and meeting new people. However, there are other kinds of transition that I don’t like. I hate saying goodbye to friends who I know I won’t see for a long time. I’ve struggled with the transition from college life to life at home, where I sometimes feel stuck and wish I had more direction about where to go next. I hate watching the health of family members deteriorate as a degenerative disease takes its toll. I wake up early to get a head start on the day, and then find that the day is over way faster than I wanted it to be. Recently, I’ve been saddened to see bright yellows, burnt oranges, and deep reds disappearing from tree branches, rustling fields of dried corn giving way to bare stretches of dirt. I know winter’s on its way, but I wish fall would hang around just a little bit longer.

In today’s world, talking about the fleeting nature of things is viewed as dismal and downright awkward. We’re told over and over again that we need to carve out a name for ourselves, one that’ll stand the test of time. We buy stuff that’s built to last, stocking up on it to insulate ourselves against any losses that could come our way. We’re told to fight tooth and nail against the aging process (which, incidentally, does funky stuff to our teeth and nails) and to idolize youth and beauty. We fill uncomfortable silence with noise and distract ourselves from the daily grind with entertainment (I’m all-too-often guilty of this last form of escapism). But no matter how fast we run and how hard we fight against it, change has a way of sneaking up on us.

In some ways, our aversion to deterioration is a good thing, a natural response to a world that’s been messed up by human evil. We weren’t created to experience decay and death.  Physical suffering, dysfunctional relationships, and the loss of loved ones are facts of life on this earth; but they feel unnatural and wrong. We grieve these changes and ask why the world is the way it is. No matter how many times we do it, parting with friends and family never seems to get easier. As the Lumineers sing: “Nobody knows how to say goodbye. It sounds so easy ’till you try.” Even though we know in our bones that each of us will grow old and die, we yearn for life that is everlasting. Andrew Peterson put it well in his song “Day by Day”: we are all “children of eternity on the run from entropy.”

And yet, despite our honest complaints and our dishonest denials, decay and death are realities. Over and over again, the stories in the Bible talk about the passing of time as something that we have to come to terms with. Jesus talked a whole lot about the fleeting nature of our material possessions and the need to prepare for death. In Isaiah 40, the prophet Isaiah ponders the frailty of human life: “All flesh is grass, and all its beauty like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades…” (Isaiah 40: 6-7). Similarly, in the book of Ecclesiastes, we’re told that death is an intrinsic part of life: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted…” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2) Things come, and things pass away. That’s the way life is. However, the response to this reality that the author of Ecclesiastes encourages isn’t apathy or grim resignation. Rather, it’s enjoyment of God’s good gifts: “Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do…Enjoy life with the wife whom you love…” (Ecclesiastes 9:7, 9)

How can we enjoy our lives, savoring every moment, when we know that the long black train is rumbling down the tracks to take us away? We live each day with our focus on eternity. If we’re only focused on the world around us, then we’re bound to get scared when the things that we’ve put our hope in start to fade away. However, those who follow the way of Jesus Christ are people who have put their hope in the eternal promises of God – the resurrection of our bodies, new life after the grave, and a renewed earth. For those who have this hope, the trajectory of time isn’t a downward spiral into empty space. It’s an arrow shooting upward, busting through the sky into a future that’s better than we could have dared to hope. God has promised to redeem every single thing that has been broken by human evil. As a wise hobbit once said, everything sad is going to come untrue. Even as we say our goodbyes, we cling to the truth that Ben Shive describes in his song “A Last Time for Everything,” the promise that “we’re low on loneliness, and long goodbyes are in short supply.”

For Christians, part of the beauty of the Halloween season is remembering that while death comes for all of us and while there are dark forces at work in the world, we don’t have to fear these things. We don’t have to fear elections that didn’t go like we had hoped. We don’t have to fear the process of growing old, or even the prospect of saying goodbye to loved ones. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the battle between good and evil has been won, and we’ve been invited to join the victory celebration. What has been lost will be recovered. We’ll see each other again. The long black train is still coming for us, but now we know where it’s headed. We can dance at the depot as we wait.

If we’re facing hardships, we can rest in the assurance that they will pass, if not in this life then in the next. While I was in the middle of writing this yesterday, my brother turned on the movie Cast Away (one of my all-time favorites), which is all about the passing of time and the daily challenge of holding on to hope. At the end of that movie, Chuck Noland, a former FedEx executive and the sole survivor of a terrible plane crash, reflects on his four years of isolation on a remote island. In a famous monologue, he describes a failed suicide attempt to his friend: “I couldn’t even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over nothing. And that’s when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. So that’s what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in and gave me a sail. And now here I am. I’m back. In Memphis, talking to you…And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?”

If we’re enjoying the ride, we can savor each of God’s good gifts in the here and now as foretastes of what’s still to come. In the end, even the passing of time will be redeemed. The same passage of the Bible that says that human beings are like grass ends with this beautiful promise: “Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:30-31). The eternal hope that Jesus gives is what fills the cycle of our days with meaning. Rich Mullins put it well in his song “Home”: “Knowing that morning follows evening makes each new day come as a gift.”

Today, on my drive home from work, tiny flakes of snow were falling outside for the first time this year. Looking out the window, I saw the farmlands bracing themselves for the cold. This year, I’ve watched the fields change from brown to green to amber and back to brown again. Winter’s coming. I can hear it puffing down the tracks. Like the earth, I’ve got to get ready. But until it comes, I’ll savor the colors still hanging on to the trees. And when the colors are gone, I’ll do my best to brave the snow as I wait for them to come back.