Goodbyes are hard

When friends say goodbye and leave for a season, a sorrowful nostalgia is often unearthed. Any dear friend whom you've given to would surely yield such emotion. As the memories are relived, a nagging reluctance deters you from steering back to reality, for fear that the moments might be exposed for what they are now - just recollections, drifting, fading into that old box where you keep the past. But they are. They are.

It started out as a feeling

Which then grew into a hope

Which then turned into a quiet thought

Which then turned into a quiet word

And then that word grew louder and louder

'Til it was a battle cry

I'll come back

When you call me

No need to say goodbye

Goodbyes are hard. Losing is hard. Crying is hard.

Yet sometimes it is in the tears and the wrenching of the heart that the heart-owner is made aware of his need for the heart-Maker. Having been made aware of such a need, he pleads for the Maker of his heart to come. He draws near as he draws near. The Maker then begins to repair, restore, renew this poor old heart of his...

Maybe there'll come another day when the owner, in his own pride, forgets the heart-Maker's work, worse still, the Maker himself. Then His only salvation would be that the Maker would be so wise to allow that poor heart to yet suffer harm, that he might be wakened to his desperate need once more.

Thus the loving Maker refines us, to return us to what we began as - image bearers, perfect and pure, presented to the Lamb on that Day (: