Skip to main content

Not Goodbye: Maranatha!

It wasn't the first time one of my best friends waved through the window of a white van that bounced down the dirt road away from our house in Cameroon. Despite all our talk of "it's not 'goodbye' -- just 'see you later' ", farewells don't seem to get easier with practice. I stood at our kitchen sink, which (thankfully) seems to be consistently producing water after two days of heavy rain. Cleaning the breakfast dishes in a small bucket of chunky water may have been more than I could have handled without tears.

Ours are a different sort of goodbye, from a country that has been "home" for only fifteen months. In sending loved ones back to the U.S., we aren't merely ending social visits. We are facing separation from teammates: people who have (for a short time) battled disease and poverty alongside us.

Yes, we are still on the same team. These people continue to fight beside us in a hundred ways, regardless of their physical location. But the smiles from a vehicle bobbling away from us appear as through a glass, dimly. We long to see face to face. 

My thoughts wandered to how the disciples felt when they said goodbye to Jesus. They must have felt the separation acutely, as He went ahead to their permanent Home. Yes, they were still on the same team. They had not been abandoned. But oh, the ache of physical fellowship lost. 

Words occasionally bear more weight when we have learned their meaning in a language not our own.  The penultimate verse in the Bible contains the phrase “come, Lord Jesus!” and may be a translation of the Aramaic word “Maranatha” (“our Lord comes”). Whenever my heart is discouraged I occasionally remind myself: Maranatha. He is coming. The early church used Maranatha as a common greeting, replacing the traditional Jewish greeting shalom (peace).

When peace feels far off, the Lord is still coming. We can encourage our hearts, and the hearts of our brothers and sisters with this word. We have not been left alone. This reminds me of another transformative non-English word: Immanuel. In Hebrew, this word means “God is with us”, and is one of the foretold names of Christ.

Wandering away from the sink, I decided to put on some Christmas music (always an easy way to remember and celebrate God is with us). Before I got the chance, my preschooler’s exuberant rendition of “Joy to the World!” bounced off our cement walls. Yes. The Lord is come. And He will come again.

I did some research on the word Maranatha today, and was excited to find out the early church used it also as a parting phrase. So, no more need for “goodbye” or “see you later”. Only “Maranatha!” as we live and love beside Immanuel.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

On Losing My Virtual Footprint and Physical Ticket

Thirty years ago, the technology that just turned my digital world upside down was unimaginable. I was locked out of my Google account because I foolishly left a Google voice number as a two-factor authentication. So when I was logged out of all devices unexpectedly, I couldn’t receive text messages to prove my identity.  The thought of trying to describe this situation to someone in the 90’s is comical. What is Google? Two-factor authentication? A digital world? Similarly, I can’t imagine explaining that despite having a ticket, I couldn’t board a plane that had a seat for me because a computer wouldn’t print my youngest child's boarding pass. In pursuing security and efficiency, have we lost common sense?  Technology has changed the world so quickly that I am old enough to remember a time when manual workarounds were commonplace and young enough to expect a lot more change will come in my lifetime. I spent much of yesterday trying every possible means of recovering ten years of e

Making a List and Checking it Twice (Choose Joy)

  Some of the best advice I heard about moving is to focus on what is good about where you are. This is solid counsel, and applicable to both temporal and geographic contentment. The pandemic provides endless opportunities for discontent, particularly comparison to how things used to be. But perspective is powerful.   I could think about snow, which reminds me that Summer is by far my least favorite season (especially in pregnancy), we don’t have a yard/lawn/parks, and the kids have been stuck inside for months (and now can’t go three minutes without fighting). We can’t bake Christmas cookies because we made the difficult but correct decision not to have an oven in our 90 degree kitchen. Our kids miss soccer, gym class, running, and having friends. And if my thoughts go in that direction, my jaw tenses up and frustration mounts.  Or I could think about how we have everything we need and so many things we want. A huge fan blowing. Christmas music streaming on internet better than we oft

Giving through Christian Health Service Corps

We are now Christian Health Service Corps missionaries. We’ve had people ask about the best ways to support us, which we will list below. Thank you for considering joining us on this mission!  If you have any questions we would love to hear from you. By Check Make payable to:              Christian Health Service Corps or CHSC Memo line:                             Project Number #176/Helm Mail to:                       Christian Health Service Corps PO Box 132 Fruitvale, TX 75127   Via Bill Pay Set up an automatic Bill Pay instruction through your bank/financial institution with donations mailed to the address above, giving your “ Project Number 176/Helm ” as the account number.   Via CHSC’s Website – for credit card donations Donate online at: _ https://www.healthservicecorps.org/author/helm/ (Please note when donating online that the Recurring Frequency default is monthly .   Use the drop down box to choose your preference.    Also, when donating online,