Resurrection 101 - The Loss is the Gain?

I hate good-byes.

The day comes, always all-too-soon, when one must let go.  And in the letting go, we realize we are left with an aching vacuum, a soul-shaped vacuum that only the one we’d let go can fill.  

Imagine the Son of God shaped vacuum left in the hearts of the disciples when Jesus bid His final good-bye to them.  Three years and forty post-resurrection days packed with sounds, sights, emotions and seismic-shift experiences wrapped in an ordinary human body.

With the mob of dark hair tangled by the wind, untamed by a brush. 

With the carpenter-strong hands that stilled the stormy sea and cleansed the leper and broke the bread and received the five loaves and two fish from a boy’s lunch bag.  The way those hands touched the blind man.  The dead girl. The make-up laden prostitute.

And then, His eyes… they've never seen eyes quite like His.  The way He looked inside their souls, and read their minds and their deepest thoughts.  The eyes that saw beyond their squabbles and sins and insecurities, flowing with heaven-fueled passion and love, and mirth-mingled truth.

The inflection of His voice.  His laughter. The thunder and the whisper, the sermons and the secrets.

But, now it’s time to let go… let go of all of it, except what is stored in the treasure-troves of memories.  It’s time to allow the sky that sent Him to take Him back. 

The clenched fists open up, one finger at a time.

It is to your advantage that I go away…John 16:7a

But, how?  How can this be to our advantage? How can You make this loss and this gaping hole, this emptiness… good? Even better?!?!!!

If I don’t go away, the Helper shall not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you John 16:7b

I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you John 14:18

They stand on the top of the hill and watch Him go – the scarred hands, the pierced feet.  

Their earth-bound existence will never be the same, for they have been marked, they have been tagged by heaven.  

The celestial texture of heaven forever changed for the eternal Son of God has been marked by the earth He created. Now, eternally, inseparably the Son of Man also.