(Originally posted on Sept 15, 2020)
A: "Hurry Megan, we are going to be late."
Me: "Late for what?"
A: "We have to do a service in a funeral this morning."
This is undoubtably one of the hardest facets of the ministry that I'm part of here in the DR. Many times I do not even know the names or life-stories of the people that I embrace in these house-funerals. We enter in, weaving in and out of the plastic chairs strewn around in the yard and not-so-strategically placed in the home with the casket in the center of the cleared-out living space. Usually the inside is significantly hotter, with ice placed under the casket to off-set the incredible heat that radiates in the wooden house due to the sun beating down on the tin roof. Somewhere near the casket, you'll find the family members, weeping, and their friends around them trying to offer some amount of comfort until it's time for burial. That's usually the position that we take, the comforters of the ones who mourn. If not, you'll find us in the kitchen serving coffee or something cold to drink with some crackers for those who have spent many hours sitting and waiting with the family. (Yes, they sit all night long and into the morning/afternoon hours until burial.)
But this time... something was different.
This time the man who passed away was in the US and we just went to be with the family that couldn't make it to say goodbye.
As we arrived, they began to set up for the service, and they pulled out the traditional flower arrangements that you'll see at a funeral...but there was something unusual. The flowers, because of the heat of the day, were already dead. So as we held this service to help this family and these loved ones to say goodbye, I kept looking at those dead flowers.
It reminded me of so many different passages in the Bible that use the short life-span of flowers to compare human life to. Like this one; "As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more." (Psalm 103:15-16)
We have a tiny space that we've been given on this earth. This man, who's service we held that day, used his wisely. So many people stood, with tears in their eyes, testifying about how this man pointed them to Christ. He taught them values that will live on in them. Even though the wind passed over his little bloom, the little flower that was his life, his impact lives on in the lives of those he invested in throughout the years he was given.
I hope and pray that you and I choose to live each day that we are given in a way that invests and impacts the lives around us while we still have breath. One day, the wind will pass over the field where we are planted, as Psalm 103 describes, and we will be gone. There are two things that we should make sure of. One, that you and I are prepared for eternity...where will we spend it? And two, are we doing what we can to make each moment of our life count before our time is up? We never know when it's our turn. Prepare yourself today.
