Au revoir. French, meaning “goodbye until we meet again…”

Recently a pillar from our church died. He was a larger than life character who loved God, his family and sharing God’s love with others. While he had a long and successful life, he will be missed by all. One of our dear friends shared a story about him: Many years earlier our friend was introducing this gentleman to her son, “Here was one of Granddad’s dearest friends.” (Her father, the boy’s grandfather had passed away years earlier.) To which the gentleman corrected her (in his recognizable booming “outside” voice), “NO. Not WAS. Our friendship isn’t over. I am just waiting until I see him again.”

As our dear friend shared, that comment has always stayed with her. I, too like that comment. It helps keep in perspective the long view that we should have of our lives. Yes, we have a beginning when God formed us but we don’t have a finite ending as long as we believe in our future with Christ. Our physical bodies may end in this temporal world but we have the choice to live in a future that has no end. To be reconciled with the Creator of all and to live in harmony as El intended. We will meet again, all who have come before us and all who come after.

Once again life is a paradox: we can only know what we are experiencing in the current moment yet we need to see life in its expansive longview. While we may only know this current experience, we do not have to be limited by that experience. Life is so much more and so much longer than we can imagine. How we view our lives (read individual, limited lives) can be scaled up to how we live our LIVES- (read universal, more eternal timeframe).

Just as mindfulness is to experience each moment (minute and hour) without worry of the past or concern for future planning, in a “cosmic” mindfulness we need to live intentionally each day and be aware of our lives here on earth- what transpires between the dashes of birth and death. To make the most of the time we are given.

Yet we need also to be aware that there is life after death and that those who have gone are not gone forever, just out of our immediate lives for now. While we do not know what the post-death future looks like, we can believe that there is something for us.

On Sunday, the Blessing at the end of the church service reminded me of these two tensions: living our daily lives to the fullest yet trusting in our eternity:

Life is short and we have too little time to gladden the hearts of those who travel the way with us. So, be swift to love and make haste to be kind, and may the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirt be with you now and remain with you forever. Amen.

Au revoir. What a great expression to remember that we WILL meet our loved ones again someday.