Keep Your Goodbyes Up To Date
Learning To Love Well While We Have Today
“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you...” Ephesians 5:1–2
A Thought About Goodbyes
I had a birthday recently, and maybe age has something to do with this, but last week these words came to me:
Keep your goodbyes up to date.
I’m not thinking morbidly about death.
Actually, I’m thinking much more about how I want to live.
I’ve stood at enough funerals and heard beautiful things said about someone who could no longer hear them. I’ve probably saved some of my own words too long.
I’m learning not to wait.
While They Can Still Hear It
There are people I deeply appreciate who may not know how much. I can feel grateful and never express it, admire something in a friend and assume they already know, or love someone deeply while leaving too much of that Love inside me.
I want to get better at letting it out.
Not just saying, “I love you,” but allowing Love to become something another person can actually experience through my life.
Paul says we are Abba’s beloved children and then invites us to walk in love. We aren’t trying to manufacture agapē. We are learning to give away the Love we’ve already received.
Keeping Them Up To Date
Keeping my goodbyes up to date doesn’t mean treating every conversation as though it might be the last.
It means I don’t want to need a last conversation to finally say what mattered.
I want to express gratitude while someone can receive it, speak well of them when they aren’t in the room, forgive more freely, encourage generously, and enjoy the people Abba has given me today.
I’m still learning.
But when my last breath eventually comes, I hope the people I love won’t need to wonder how I felt about them.
I want my goodbyes to already be up to date because my Love was.
Reflection
Is there someone who needs to know what they mean to me?
What gratitude have I felt but not expressed?
How can Abba’s Love become something someone experiences through me today?
Prayer
Abba Father, thank You for today and for the people You’ve given me to share it with. Keep teaching me to receive Your Love and give it freely while we have today. Amen.