Our appreciation for the meaning and value of someone’s presence in our lives really cannot depend too much on how much time they are with us. 

Yes, most of us have had our very beings shaped by relationships that have lasted years and years, through many seasons. 

And at the same time, most of us have had our very beings shaped by experiences with others that did not did not last long at all. I’m sure many of you have stories about even some brief encounter with a stranger that had a deep impact on you: you know, you’re waiting for a bus and strike up a conversation, and there’s this startling connection with someone where you both tell each other exactly what you needed to hear in that moment, before you go your separate ways; or just think of the profound experiences we can have with great performers, musicians, poets, actors, speakers, maybe even preachers, who we get to share time with in a heightened creative setting, before dispersing. 

Then, we probably all could share stories about people who came into and out of our lives for longer than a moment but still only for a season or two, a relationship that gave us something we treasure forever. Maybe a middle school teacher who saw your humanity when no one else seemed to; or a friend who taught you to share your gifts, before dying too soon; or a life-changing love affair in circumstances that could never endure. These sorts of experiences with others can shape us in profound ways, that may be different but just as important as the relationships that endure through years and years.

The meaning and value of our lives with others seems to have much more to do with intensity than duration. 

This is true both in a live-giving sense and in a live-denying sense. Someone can do a lot of damage very quickly, just as a relationship can become transformational in an astonishingly brief period of time. 

This is not at all to dismiss to power of life-long commitments to the journey of life and love through decades. But the meaning and value of those relationships also have much more to do with the fullness with which life is lived together, rather than just with a tally of the years. 

This is true not only with our relationships and encounters with others, but also with our very lives themselves. 

Our appreciation for the meaning and value of someone’s life itself really cannot depend too much on how long that life happens to be. 

Everything we have to say about Jesus is because of a three-year period at the end of his life in his early 30s. 

On the eve before he was assassinated at the age of 39, Dr. King said, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.”

In an ultimate sense, the intensity of a life and the fullness of our lives together is more enduring than the duration. 

And, in an ultimate sense, each life and all life together in every moment is as intensely present and precious as it possibly can be … if only we live like it. 

I have come to sincerely believe that a life that lasts for one year is just as fully purposeful, just as enough in an ultimate sense, as a life that lasts one hundred years. The same is true of our lives together … if only we live like it. 

This is not to dismiss sadness and loss and tragedy. We need to live that fully as well. But this is to try to open our perspective to a little more of a “God’s eye view of things.”

The great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote, “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”  

Time passes. All things change. Our lives are shaped by love and loss and love. The presence of those with whom we have been blessed to share some days under the sun, can linger in our very beings after they are gone from our presence, like impressions left on clay. Through every moment, every encounter, in sadness or joy, we always have the opportunity to live as fully as possible on behalf of the Holy Love Supreme who animates this world.   

As the wisdom of the book of Ecclesiastes puts it, there is a season for all things under the sun. Through these seasons are tides of presence and absence, of togetherness and separation. 

“God has made everything fitting in its time, but has also placed eternity in our hearts.” This is for us a mystery, which we can witness with awe. It is a mystery, for us to be in awe of, that our lives can join together for a time of shared life and love, and then dissolve away. 

In the ultimate view, it is as it needs to be. It is enough. 

“The only way to make sense out of change,” in the words of Alan Watts, “is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” 

Thanks be to God.