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Message from Pastor Marty

In the Twinkling of an Eye

By Peter W. Marty

I don’t casually divide people into categories. Most attempts to bundle human beings into like-type groups and pigeon-hole them, just so someone can make easy sense of the world, strikes me as wrong. Too often, it leads to exclusion.

But some distinctions are fair and non-exclusive. I made one recently. It follows years of observing people who transition from their own home into some kind of retirement community or care facility. What I have concluded is that there are basically two kinds of persons living in such places. One variety takes all of the blessed experiences they have been given in life, and turns those into a new vision for happiness. These are forward-looking people who do not measure the significance of their joy by their surroundings, but by the knowledge that the gift of every new day is just that — new and a gift. The other variety of folks are individuals who expend great energy calculating what they have lost. They lament “what is no more” in their life. The transition to a new home is excruciating for them, and they battle contentment by trying to relive the past.

The human journey is so short. We no sooner figure out why we are here than it is already time for us to be leaving. We get caught between the irreversibility of the past and the unpredictability of the future. Life becomes a long string of goodbyes and hellos. As we get this goodbye and hello rhythm down, we find that accommodating change comes a little easier. We stop trying to live a remembered past, and we start to drink more deeply of the “now.” Every moment suddenly seems unpurchasable. We experience each new day with the excitement of the first time. Today is, after all, a gift. And it is new.

When our new worship center opens in a few weeks, it will be a formal goodbye to one sanctuary and a hello to another. All of us will be looking up at a new cross in a brand new space, singing our hearts out. It is guaranteed to be an emotional experience as we take stock of a past that is unrepeatable and a future that is unknown. Count on a few tears. They belong with every honest goodbye and exciting hello.

When you read this column for the first time, fresh from your mailbox, my wife Susan and I will have just dropped off our firstborn at college. We’ll be driving somewhere between Waterville, Maine, and Davenport, Iowa, using all 1,306 miles to ponder what happened to 18 years. Just yesterday, Jacob was three years old at the living room window, standing on tippy toes with huge excitement, waiting hours on end for his grandparents to pull in from out of town. The Bible says our transition from death to resurrected life will be as fast as the twinkling of an eye. I wonder what this makes a son’s transition from childhood to young adulthood.

I don’t have the goodbye and hello rhythm perfectly down yet, anymore than you do. But I know that I want to be the kind of person who takes all of the blessed experiences of the past, and then turns those into a new vision for happiness. I want to be as excited about the unknowns of our children’s next chapter, as I am appreciative of their last.

So my word to you is the same word I want to give myself: “Live this day as if it were your first day, as if it were your last day, as if it were your only day.” And for goodness sakes, don’t hesitate to cry. Every honest goodbye and exciting hello deserves at least that much.

Pastor Peter W. Marty,

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