There's A Last Time For Everything

A Few Reflections on The Good Old Days (Things That Matter #25)

In Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, the author, often called Qoheleth/King Solomon, says:

“1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: 2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, 3 a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, 4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, 5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, 6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, 7 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, 8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.”

I love that. But, in all humility, I want to add a tiny disclaimer. So, here’s my take, Halcomb’s Disclaimer, if you will: yes, there’s a time for everything, but there’s also a last time for everything. You know what I mean, don’t you? We think we’ve got time. We think there will be another joke told, another dinner, another game night where nobody plays games but everyone just talks. And then one day you’re sitting across from your friend Jerimy, knowing it’s the last time for a long time any of that’ll happen, and all you can do is the usual. Talk theology. Rant about politics. Watch stupid videos. Laugh like everything is still normal when you know it’s not. It’s like you’re trying to redeem the time, to stretch it out, trying to make the laughter last longer, trying to push back against the clock, trying to hold something holy with hands too small for the job. And it’s so freakin’ hard.

The Office finale has a line, one Andy says, that many of you may remember. But if not, let me share it with you. He says, “I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”

It’s been over a decade since that aired and I’m still not over it. I’ve watched all 9 seasons of The Office start to finish at least five times. Maybe more. Either way, every time I hear that quote, I choke up. And now I think I know why. Because it’s the kind of truth that doesn’t shout but just sits quietly in your chest. It resonates. It lies there dormant, awake but barely, until something happens and you realize it’s been whispering all along, “The good old days.”

A few days ago, I was living in those whispering moments, those days. Those nights. Graduation ceremonies. Dinners with friends. Prayers around the table with my son and his girlfriend and her family at the kitchen bar and my wife’s family in the living room. The kind of night where everyone was fighting tears but losing. The kind of night where you wish you could just hit pause and freeze time. The kind of night where no one really has the words, much less the right words, so you just sit. You cry. You hug. You laugh. You pray. The good old days.

During many of these moments, I took another cue from The Office. On the way to their wedding in Niagra Falls, Pam tells Jim about a tip she got from her aunt, a tip for taking mental photographs to make lasting memories. A way to remember the good old days.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been very intentional about doing this. And there have been too many times to count where I thought, this might be the last time ever for this. The last time this group is together, this configuration of people. The last time these walls hold this kind of joy and ache in the same room like this. The last time I drive this street to this address and get to call it home. The last time I see this cashier at the grocery store. The last time I get boba from my favorite spot. There’s a last time for everything. And, really, we often don’t realize it’s sacred until we look back and wish we’d lingered just a bit more. The good old days.

Then there was the airport. Ah…the Honolulu airport. My kids’ friends showed up in droves. From the curb outside all the way through check-in to TSA. They carried bags. They laughed. They made bets on how much each suitcase would weigh when it was thrown on to the scale. The lady checking the bags in was having a hard night but they brought the spirit and got her laughing. She’d never seen anything like it. I could tell. And, at one point, my kids’ friends literally encircled my kids, right there in the airport, in flash mob style, and sang “An Irish Blessing” to them. Right. There. In. Public. The good old days.

May the road rise to meet you / May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face / the rains fall soft upon your fields.

And until we meet again, until we meet again / may God hold you in the palm of his hand.

May the sun make your days bright / may the stars illuminate your nights,
May the flowers bloom along your path / your house stand firm against the storm.

And until we meet again, until we meet again / may God hold you in the palm of his hand.

Teenagers. Unprompted. Were literally singing that in the airport. How blessed of a man I am to have witnessed that. It was holy. Hands down the holiest moment I’ve ever witnessed in an airport for sure. These kids, nobody told them to do this (so far as I know). They just did it. It was pure, unadulterated, aloha. It wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t cringe. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Nobody tried to play it cool. Nobody tried to hide the tears. Everyone was open and vulnerable. And there was God. Right in the middle of the terminal. In the middle of a song. In the middle of my heart breaking and bursting all over the floor at Daniel K. Inouye Airport all at once. The good old days.

I’ve been stuck in this loop of existential lasts lately. This is the last time I’ll drive this Jeep and call it mine. This is the last time I’ll see that exact view of the city. The last time I’ll hear my kids and the neighbor kids flying together on the rope swing. The last time I’ll shower in that house and leave my shampoo just where I like it because nobody else touches it. The last time I’ll walk back in and feel like I belong there. And the thing is, those moments felt normal. Mundane even. But looking back, they weren’t just or merely normal, they were everything. The good old days.

That’s the thing about the mundane. We get so used to it that we stop seeing it. We especially stop seeing it for what it is: holy. A holy gift. But I did an in-depth study once, which I later designed a college course around and a sermon series. I looked at every miracle in Scripture. Turns out, only about four percent of Scripture is miracles. Did you know that? Four percent! That’s it!!! The other ninety-six percent of Scripture is…wait for it…people doing stuff like gathering water, harvesting crops, walking from one place to another, getting in arguments, and parents trying not to lose it on their teenagers. #AbrahamFail Turns out, Scripture, like life today and throughout every century, isn’t mostly about the miraculous. (A fact some “Christians” would do well to learn and come to grips with.) Nah, it’s about the ordinary. Which is crazy, because when you tell some people that, they look disappointed. Like they were expecting a magic show and got put on dish duty instead. Put differently, Scripture’s about, indeed, God is about, the daily grind, the good old days.

Because, as we all know, haircuts matter. Dinner matters. The dishes matter. These are the places and times where God shows up. But are we discerning enough to notice? In the giving of rides. In the folding of laundry. In the people who cry with you, laugh with you, bring you breakfast because they know you’re still packing last-minute and probably forgot to eat. God doesn’t just wait for the mountaintops. He lives in the moments when we’re warming up leftovers. In the moments where we’re laugh-crying at the dumb videos we share with our friends. In the moments where we pass the ketchup in just the wrong way to annoy that person we love. In the moments after graduation where my daughter got so many leis from people who loved her that they were stacked up to her eyes and she couldn’t see. The good old days.

Comedy is very much built on this same reality. People don’t laugh as hard at what’s unrealistic; no, they laugh at the familiar. They laugh at what they can relate to. They laugh at real life. They laugh at the struggles of married couples. At parents who forget school picture day. At cars breaking down. At real life. It’s hard to laugh at grandeur. People want real. They want someone to say out loud what they’ve only dared to think. Someone to say what they were intuiting but couldn’t quite find the right combination of words for. Because that’s so much of makes it funny. And that’s also what makes it sacred. The good old days.

So yeah, these last few days, I’ve been saying goodbye to a lot of people I love. People came by to help. To carry stuff. To say thank you. To cry and pray and hug and tell stories. To eat with us. To write notes. To sit quietly because that’s all they could do. And God was there. In every moment, he was there. In every awkward goodbye. Every inside joke. Every packing box and shared plate of food. And I knew. Deep down I knew. I was in the good old days.

And I will remember these people. I will remember their generosity. Their tears. Their weird habits. Their love. I’ll probably write jokes about some of them too. I mean, come on, someone brought me a letter. Just one. And she handed it to me in front of the group and said, “Here’s a letter for you. Read it on the plane. There’s no money in it.” Ha! Who does that? But I kept it. And, honestly, I haven’t had the courage to read it yet. But I will. And once I do, I’ll hold on to that letter. And I will remember. I’m sure I’ll laugh. I’m sure I’ll cry. And I’m sure I will remember that there was a last time for everything, including that. Thank you friends, thank you o’hana, thank you, God, for the good old days.