I want you to know that I am praying for you this week. I know that many of you are in the heat of preparing for and taking finals and I realize how hard that can be. Finals always had this weird anticlimactic feeling to me. It’s like there is no last party or get-together except for graduation, which is really just for seniors, but even then there are so many family members around it isn’t the same. It just feels like there is no real “goodbye.” No countdown at Times Square with confetti falling and air-horns bleating. Everyone just slowly goes away leaving behind a ghost town of a campus.
I used to have this feeling about Bonita Park too. That is until one of the wisest men I know, Bob Kirby, straightened me out. I was in the kitchen cooking, he stopped in to say “goodbye” and I told him how sad I was that he was leaving and that I wished he could be around all the time. He answered purely and simply by saying “that’s what heaven is for.” I think he was right. We don’t need to be sad when we say goodbye to our friends because the relationships we nourish here on earth will be continued infinitely and perfectly in heaven.
I am so excited to begin nourishing new relationships with all of you very soon. I look forward to working with Kyle this week, Brittany and many of the crowd from SNU next week, the Portales group the beginning of the week after, and I most of all look forward to all of us being together Friday the 22nd.
