This will be a week filled with joy. It will also be heavy with the weight of farewell.

Hamilton Commencement is this Saturday and Charlotte’s is a week later. As I’ve written before on the occasion of graduation week, there will be a lot of “Congratulations” all around—celebrating years of study, formation, and friendships— followed by soft-spoken “Goodbyes.” Even with difficulties, conflicts, and misunderstandings that have surely taken place over the course of the seminary years, when we see students walk across the stage, it is painful saying goodbye knowing that we will not see most of these students again.

Saying goodbye is a natural part of life. But rationalizing it as a normal process does not make it any easier. I would like to suggest it is only “natural” in a fallen world. It is “natural” to have pain and tears saying goodbye in the same way that we are not made to die, or to be separated from those we love. We are made for community and life together.

Heaven will be a wonderful place, or as Jonathan Edwards preached in one of his most moving sermons, “Heaven is a world of love.”

But we are not in heaven; we are on earth where we have to say goodbye, once again, to people who have become close to us. Over the past few years, we have eaten together and worshipped and studied and discussed important ideas. There is a special intimacy that develops in seminary, for we are dealing with ultimate concerns, often on a very personal level, in a community on a hill (in Hamilton) or in an online community gathered across the world.

I have, like most of us, since childhood lived around the rhythm of a school calendar. A lifetime of living along these patterns doesn’t make it any easier when the transitions inevitably come. This is the rhythm of my life here at the seminary: Greeting, then drawing close as friends and fellow pilgrims, hearing stories, sharing doubts and joys and discovering new sense of “calling.” Then, after a few years, they move on into new seasons of calling and life. We send graduates out as people formed through study, spiritual formation, and community life, and equipped to advance the kingdom of God.

Most students will not send updates, nor will most come back to visit. So, our farewell is not even expressed as saying, “See you soon.” Instead, it means, “See you in heaven.” Heaven will be a place permeated by divine love (as Edwards taught) and love always involves people and God. We catch a glimpse of that true love here and now, love that comes from God and always flows toward another. But its fulfillment awaits us in heaven, where we will be reunited with those friends long gone from our community.

I look forward to hearing the great stories of faithfulness when I meet these graduates in heaven, along with the thousands that have gone before them. I am eager to hear of their boldness in ministry, and even to hear of their pains and losses and how Christ was sufficient for them. I look forward to hearing about those whom they have led to faith in Christ, and then to meet the very ones whom they have led to faith! Generations will reconnect, even while meeting others for the first time.

So, I say, “Congratulations.” “Goodbye.” And, “How I long for our reunion in Christ!”

Dr. Scott W. Sunquist, president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, is author of the “Attentiveness” blog. He welcomes comments, responses, and good ideas.