The good in Goodbye

One Meredith Wilson song in the 1962 film “The Music Man,” starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones, is “Sincere.” Singing it, The Buffalo Bills lament, “where is the sin in sincere, what is good in goodbye?”

Goodbyes can be good.

This is the time of year in Fortrose-Rosemarkie, Scotland, when adult seagulls say goodbye to their young. Hearing the frantic, anxious calls of the abandoned youngsters rips my heart. The baby seagulls don’t understand why parents that have so lovingly cared for them suddenly leave and ignore their agonized cries. Big, fluffy, grey baby gulls walk along the edge of the water and sit on rooftops calling their absent parents. But this time, no matter how gut-wrenching the cries – the parents don’t respond.

I wonder if it is as hard on the parents to ignore the hurt cries of their young as it is on me. If so, they ignore the sharp, biting heart pains and distance themselves – using the wisdom God instilled in them – so the babies will be forced to exercise the feeding and flying skills that the parents have so diligently taught them. If they continued to care for their babies, the babies would continue to live on handouts and never learn self-sufficiency. A winged example of the popular cliché “tough love.”

All parents experience the hurt and learn the benefits of goodbyes when their children are still young. Goodbyes are a part of sending children to school to learn, sending them to visit grandparents and friends, sending them to summer camps…sending them away to universities, jobs, and distant locations. Without the goodbyes, children would never grow into their full potential and learn God’s will for their lives. Goodbyes can be good – but they still hurt.

The longest, hardest goodbye is when someone we love “dies.” It’s been nearly a year since my wonderful, talented son, USMC Major Luke Parker, “died” to this world. Perhaps my deep inner hurt and emptiness magnifies the anguished cries of the baby seagulls and makes me hypersensitive.

Everyone who has ever said goodbye to a loved one who departed from this world, however, has an advantage over those confused, lonely baby gulls. If we are Christians, we know that the separation is temporary. We will join our loved ones again in Heaven with Jesus lighting the way. What an awesome comfort! Death is not an end, it’s the doorway into eternity and the beginning of living a life without pain and loss.

As for the gulls…they are forced to use the life skills they have been taught. They will pass them on to their youngsters. But will they ever see their parents again? I hope so. I really hope so.

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Building with Spaghetti

It wouldn’t make sense to build a house with spaghetti. Cooked, the spaghetti would be too limp, uncooked it would be too brittle – and either limp or brittle, a spaghetti house would not last.

Yet too many times in life – we resort to spaghetti building.

Scottish National Party First Minister Alex Salmond resigned his position following his party’s unsuccessful bid to gain Scottish independence from the United Kingdom. Prior to the election, those pushing for independence and those pushing against it spent a ton of money, energy, effort and publicity pushing their agendas. In the end, they were engaging in spaghetti building.

Wherever we live, we need to become involved in our government and voice our concerns and choices. If we don’t, someone with a louder voice takes over. We need to stand up for what we believe in and be willing to expend time, energy and effort to make that stand. But we also need to remember that much of what we do in this life – no matter how impassioned and well-intentioned – is simply spaghetti building. This life that we live right now on planet earth is not intended to be the end of the story. No matter how much money we spend on our health and appearance and how much success and fame we garner down here on earth – in the end, we shatter like broken spaghetti.

The good news is that Jesus Christ, Son of God, is eternal. He is forever. He has built a forever place for us out of gold and precious stones to replace the earthly spaghetti houses we are building. The body shells that hold us on this planet and return to dust like crushed spaghetti get left behind when we “die.” We don’t need them anymore because we get new heavenly bodies that never grow old, never hurt, never sorrow – never lose their perfection.

So when things don’t turn out the way you think they should, don’t get discouraged. Take a handful of spaghetti, crush it and say, “This setback is temporary. It doesn’t matter. God’s plan for me is perfect and it’s eternal.”

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Shell Decorating

A pub in our area is welcoming students back to university with shell decorating contests and cocktails.

Contest categories include best fingernails, most glitter, most unique tattoos, wildest hair, and most body art – all of which will be left behind when we die. Our bodies are mere shells to hold the part of us that really matters while we’re alive. When we die – the us that is really us – escapes into eternity. Shells are buried. What a sad waste of expense and energy is reflected in decorating shells that will return to dust when we die.

The Bible advises in 1 Peter 3:3, “Do not let your adornment be merely outward…rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.”

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make the best of the bodies that God gave us by taking care of them. It honors God when Christians set themselves apart from the rest of the world by separating our appearances from non-believers. But the Bible tells us in 1 Timothy 6:7, “For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.” With that in mind, does it make sense to spend time and money decorating shells?

Shell decorating contests are vain, useless, empty events. As for the cocktails? Alcohol poisons the shells that we spend so much money decorating.

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