Perhaps we need to see here the discipline of God's providence. I refer to God's lesson of detachment. One of the great feasts of the Jews was the Feast of Tabernacles. It marked the completion of the harvest of fruit, oil, and wine. Historically, it commemorated the wanderings in the wilderness. For one week, Jews were required to leave their houses and to dwell in booths made from the boughs of trees. What it taught was detachment from possessions and their earthly homes.

In our Christian life we are constantly called to surrender our heart's most cherished possessions, so that we might learn to lay up treasures in heaven rather than here on earth. The loss of dear friends is one way God loosens the earthly roots we put down. As the divine gardener transplants first one then other friends to the infinitely richer soil of eternity, so this should turn us more towards the friendship of our Lord Jesus Christ. "I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you" (Jn.15:15).

As life advances we should look to see more clearly what God is doing with us, recognize his loving hand at work, hear more distinctly Christ's invitation: "Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Mtt. 25:34).

--Rev. Dr. Peter J.A. Cook, M.A. is rector of St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church, in Lake Charles, in the Diocese of Western Louisiana