See you later vs. Goodbye

Ok, so my lofty goals of regularly blogging didn't pan out, sorry. Anyway, I'm going to try again.

I had a very touching experience a few weeks back that I thought I would share. I recently completed a contract with the city of Nashville. While there, I had made good friends with a lot of folks, but I had worked closely with and become good friends with Trent Arwine and Terrence Riche.

Trent and I had talked on many occasions about spiritual matters and had become pretty close. We all knew for several weeks that my contract was ending and that the time was drawing near. On my last day, one of Trent's closest friends lost his battle with cancer. The friend lived out of state, so Trent stayed home preparing to travel.

We spoke that day via Google Talk and he was pretty upset that he wasn't there for my last day. I told him well, "This is see you later, not goodbye". It was just one of those things I said without really thinking too much about it.

Trent, being a very spiritual guy, immediately made the connection with his friend that passed. He told me later that it changed his whole view of the funeral, it didn't seem as final as it would have without that thought. We should all remember that this life is not all there is. We are all so bound by the concept of time, that we think that the relationships that we have here is all that there is. One day we will see that the time we spend here in this life is a mere drop in the ocean.

I don't remember where I heard it, but someone said that the only thing that you can take from this life to the next is relationships. A sobering thought....