Early Check-Out

We’ve stayed in hotel/motels a number of times. On several occasions we have asked for a late checkout. I don’t recall ever asking for an early one. 

You might want to stay late for any number of reasons. Maybe you have somewhere to go in the morning, and then want to come back and clean up or change clothes before checking out. Maybe you just want to sleep in a bit and avoid the long line at the waffle maker. 

I have a harder time justifying an early checkout. If the room (or the neighbors) are objectionable, one might choose to leave the hotel, but with a full refund in hand - not an early checkout. In fact, even if you have to leave for the airport and 3 a.m., you just get up and go (no waffle). There’s no early checkout. 

But in the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen a number of early checkouts, not from motels, but from life. We prayed for the family for whom I conducted a funeral for their 26-year-old son. We have read about the fashion accessories lady whose name will now outlive her life. And there is the chef/world traveler, who by all accounts, was the nicest guy you could hope to meet - he also took an early checkout. In fact, all of these, and so many more that we remember, were delightful people in so many ways. With some, there may have been indications of trouble, but with others, this was a surprise.

Early checkouts seem to indicate that, for the individual involved, they believe that the darkness of the night will only get darker, and that morning will never come. The pain of the moment will persist, and the hope of peace is too faint to, well, hope for. Those who would help have been found to be not near enough helpful, and the loneliness of this decision is made alone, solely for oneself, as though others were unaffected. 

What is lost in the early checkout is the chance to see a sunrise so beautiful that it would make the darkness worth it; to meet a person so gracious that it would make one almost forget the pain; to meet one so fascinating that you are more taken up with that person than with self. “Well, that’s unlikely to happen,” you might say. In response, consider that it is rendered impossible by the early checkout. 

And further, many have come to know Jesus, and have found in Him that darkness-destroying sunrise; the One with grace so contagious that it penetrates and heals; that One so interesting that you would not want to waste a single day of getting to know Him better.