The Value of Goodbyes

Goodbyes, especially important or intense ones, cause us to face the ultimate questions of life: Why suffering? Where am I headed? What are my most cherished values? Goodbyes create a certain space in us where we allow ourselves 

room to look at life in perspective and to gradually discover answers to some questions about life. We also learn a lot about significant others in our life: we learn who is willing to walk the long road with us, whose heart also welcomes us no matter what, who loves enough to stand with us in good times and in bad. Goodbyes, when reflected upon in faith, can draw us to a greater reliance upon the God of Love.

In today’s Readings we hear this strange unbelievable story of Jesus leaving his disciples, saying ‘goodbye’. It seems like their source of life has left them – their teacher, comforter, their ‘home’ was gone. We all can relate to the feeling of being left alone and asking ‘where do we go from here?’ These first disciples had to ‘let go’ physically of Jesus at his ascension.

A new beginning in our relationship with God.

One of the first things that strikes you about this particular ‘goodbye’ is that it isn’t an unhappy one. What do the disciples do once Jesus had said his goodbye and is gone? They go back to the temple joyous in their praise of God for this ascension is less about endings and goodbyes but more about beginnings.

It seems that Jesus had to leave his disciples if they were to get on with the task of preaching, teaching, healing and establishing the church. They probably felt inadequate, yet they got on with their lives, doing what he had charged them to do.

What these early disciple discovered from Ascension Day on was that Christ was within them; His presence was there to be found in them and in the world. They were now the Body of Christ, and they would find him and know him present again within their experiences, as they left their comfort zone and went to Samaria and to the ends of the earth - that’s where they would find and see him. In all our life experiences I believe that God is there with us, within us and in the world ready to do more with our lives than we ever thought possible. 

Do we believe this?                                                                   

Marie Weatherall