The One Show on BBC 1 tonight draws attention to reunions and partings.

I was watching this programme because the results of the BBC programme 20th-century Icons are announced on it. The finalists were clarified in tonight’s programme and I have updated my blogpost.

However, the same show had a marvellous story about the reunion of two students whose lives had parted 65 years before! They called it ‘Six decades of separation’. It was quite sentimental.

It reminded me of my listening to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme in 1998 about people phoning old friends after 20 years’ absence, in my case 1978, which prompted my phoning a former medical colleague ‘out of the blue’. I was delighted to discover that they recognised my voice immediately without my having to identify this ‘voice from the past’! It must be ‘my dulcet tones’. This was in the era before social media and the internet was just beginning.

Memories and reminiscences are part of my being – possibly too sentimental for some, but that is the way that I am and I, like most people, like the way I am. So much so, that many people do not contemplate the profound change that the Lord Jesus Christ informs us that we all need.

It is sad that the secular philosophy of our society has made young people hate themselves. They demean themselves by contrasting themselves on social media with success or perceived better traits in other people, which the Bible teaches is “not wise” 2Cor 10:12. Rather, to improve their self-worth they should be taught the value of their soul. This secular age is short-changing our young people.

Those who do not like to change, nor feel the need to change, imply that they are perfect, which is the meaning of God’s description of Himself “I am Who I am” Ex 3:14 – in other words, I am not what you imagine Me to be, but I am what and Who I am. God alone is perfect and does not need to change. We need to change, beginning with being born again, after which we continue to be ‘work in progress’.

Lovebirds
Back to our aged lovebirds on BBC’s The One Show. Jock corrected them that it was actually 65 years, even more than the ‘Six Decades’ since they met. When he did eventually meet Joyce he said: “I’ve got so much to learn about you.” “We never really said, Goodbye.” This reminded me of some of my parting greetings. When people say, “Goodbye”, I ask if they know what Goodbye means. Usually, they don’t. So I tell them that it is a conflation of “God be with you”. So this is a good parting phrase. Possibly, a secularist reading this blogpost will now stop using Goodbye.

Recently, as I get older and feel my age, being unable to promise myself more time in this world, I have begun to use the parting comment: “Will I meet you in heaven?”

As you can imagine, there is a wide variety of answers to this question and it can lead to a profitable conversation. I plan to make an additional blogpost about these answers.

Of those who answer in the affirmative, I am able to continue: “Well – we don’t have the time right now, but I will get the rest of your story in heaven!”

So you have the BBC The One Show to thank for this blogpost about reunions and partings.

To all my readers:

It would be good to hear your story in heaven. Will you be there?

Every blessing – Goodbye!

Donald

Update:

5 Sep 2019: another lovebirds’ reunion story about re-united love letters.

23 Jan 2021: with the death of Larry King today, one tribute showed him saying: “I don’t know what to say, except to you, my audience, Thank you. And instead of Goodbye, how about, So long?” This raises the question whether Larry King knew what Goodbye means, or that eternity is so long that it frightens Richard Dawkins.

His death was announced on Russia Today as: “A legend, an icon, a King is dead.” Interestingly, only hours earlier on Sputnik: Orbiting the World with George Galloway about the replacing of Donald Trump with Joe Biden as US President, George Galloway used the phrase: “The king is dead, long live the king!”

This co-incidence reminds me of another. On 6 Aug 2005 I began to read Robin Cook: The Point of Departure and I read several chapters during the sunshine hours in the afternoon. My diary reminds me: “On the evening news I learned that Robin Cook has been taken into Raigmore Hospital having taken seriously ill walking on the mountains, the very same day as I have begun his book! Later the news was that he had collapsed at 14.23 hrs near the summit of Ben Stack while hill-walking. A training helicopter was nearby and he was winched aboard unconscious as it could not land; he was airlifted to Raigmore Hospital he was pronounced dead by the A&E doctors there, aged 59 y/o.” I was beginning his biography at the very moment of his death. Some people call these coincidences ‘God-incidents’. Most people have experienced their own examples, which are God’s testimony to them that He is in charge of Providence and we must yet appear before Him to give Him our account. I remember one atheist recounting to me one of his own experiences, which he admitted was “very spooky”. How much better to be reconciled to God and to sleep easy in your bed at night.

On his interviewing skill and style he explained and encouraged: “I’m Larry King – questioning, listening, learning – I always said I never learned anything when I was talking. It’s important to listen. Question more.” I agree that questions are important, which I have used all my life, but I disagree that you never learn by talking. By talking one 1. clarifies one’s own thoughts, 2. learns the difficulties others have with your speaking, 3. learns to clarify one’s own speech and 4. often one finds a new line of thought that one had not thought about. Speaking clarifies one’s own thinking and raises new thoughts and distinctions. Meditation is, after all, speaking to oneself. The greatest thinkers made their insights by meditating, mulling over things in one’s mind. Besides, speaking is a charitable act when imparting useful knowledge to others.

“Reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.”

Francis Bacon

or as I prefer it: “Reading makes a broad man, speaking makes a ready man, and writing makes an exact man.” You should try them. We have two ears and one mouth and we should listen and speak in due proportion.

“Let everyone be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.”

The epistle of James 1:19.