Lynn and I just got back from a trip to Colorado, arriving home after 1 am and going to sleep around 2. This morning I had to get up and do a funeral in Spanish for a beloved brother at the church called Pan de Vida. All of this provoked some serious reflection on my part, and I’d like to share it with you.
We went to Colorado to commemorate the life of Lynn’s sister Diane with her husband, one of her sons and his wife, other family members and some friends. We flew to Denver, then drove a rental car over 5 hours across the state to Cimarron, a YWAM base up in the mountains, where for 18 years, I used to go teach twice a year. They let us stay in a hospitality house there, so we bracketed our time with Lynn’s sister Diane’s family by staying in Cimarron the first and last days, and staying in a motel in Delta, where Diane had lived, on Tuesday and Wednesday.
We (especially Lynn) needed that time in the beautiful mountains as a time to prepare and then recover from the days we’d be with Diane’s family. For Lynn it was very hard, kind of reliving the loss of her sister (who passed last December), and seeing some of the brokenness of the family that remains. Diane’s husband Beep had asked Lynn to go through all of Diane’s belongings to choose anything she wanted to save as a memento or give to other member’s of Diane’s family back east. Lynn spent hours and hours going through things, sifting out what to save and what to leave behind. There were many tears which fell from her eyes, and the eyes of Diane’s husband and others.
Beep and Diane were people who believed in God, but who never really enjoyed or became part of any church. They didn’t want a formal service of any kind, just wanted to be together with family and friends who knew Diane. Most of their friends are bikers, so their ways of coping with loss involved, shall we say, chemical mood enhancers, lots of beer, wine, and smoke.
The thing was, I wasn’t uncomfortable with them at all during those days. That’s my past too, so I understand them. Lynn and I just sat among them, reminiscing and sharing whatever we could of encouragement and hope. I found out most kind of knew I was a pastor. But they don’t really know what a pastor is like. I guess they didn’t think I’d like them or hang out with them. But I enjoyed it. They really expressed a lot of love for one another in their way.
It turned out that there were several who’d endured a recent loss. One grandfather told me a grandson had recently committed suicide in a particularly gruesome way. Another man had lost his beloved wife, who’d been Diane’s best friend, only shortly before Diane herself passed. Then there were Beep and Lynn, who’d lost a beloved wife and sister. There was Diane’s son Joshua, who lost his mom.
Everyone shared memories and I tried to share a witness here and there. I particularly enjoyed talking to Beep’s youngest (45 year old) son, Larry. He was quite intelligent and we talked for probably a couple of hours, in which I told him the many reasons I have come to believe in the Lord, His Son, and His Word. I told him how my faith gives me such a different perspective on life, the world, what happens when we die, etc. I hope something I said may provoke some searching in Larry’s life.
There were two or three other opportunities to share something of the Word of God with folks. Then we drove back up into the mountains for one more night and a few more hours of seeing the beauty of God’s creation there.
The next day we drove all the way to the Denver airport, caught our flight, and got here after 1 am.
This morning, I had to get up early and get myself ready for the funeral. I put on my suit and drove over to Pan de Vida. There, I was among mostly Puerto Ricans from all over the US, along with a few from other Latin American countries. This was a formal funeral service, and I was allowed to be the pastor, sharing the scriptures and our hope in Christ.
It was very, very different, because the brother who passed had that assurance of his salvation, and his family was mostly Christian. So they were sad to suffer the loss of his presence with them, but they knew, most of them, anyway, that they’d see him again. And they knew he was no longer suffering all the pain and difficulties of this life.
I shared with them from Acts 17, which really tells us the purpose of life, because Paul says God has placed us in the time period in which we live and the location, so that we might seek for Him and find Him, though He’s not far from us. That’s really what life is all about – searching for God and finding Him, and living with and for Him, so that we can one day be united with Him forever. If a person finds that purpose in this life, they have reached the most important goal there is, and their life has been a success. Nothing else matters as much. Nothing else can give us so much comfort.
Knowing this life is not the end, and not even the most important part, but the next life is, gives us such a different perspective on everything. If we’ve suffered a lot, we know it will be made up to us and will have had some purpose we didn’t understand at the time. If we didn’t get to do a lot of things we’d hoped, we know there will be other opportunities. Even if we’ve had a very good life, we still know the very best of this life we may have experienced was only at the most a slight glimpse of the glory that awaits us. So we don’t have to be sad that it’s over. We know the best is yet to come.
I’m so blessed to be sort of a missionary. I’m so thankful that God let me be with the bikers and dope-smokers and be able to enjoy my time with them, without being uptight. I felt accepted by them, and I hope they felt the same from me. I’m also thankful that God led me to learn Spanish, so I could also be with a group of Puerto Ricans and other Latin-Americans. I could feel comfortable with them, share fellowship, food, and the Word of God.
Today I’m just reflecting on these blessings. It’s kind of a bitter-sweet feeling. I was with a lot of grieving people this week. But you know, I really think death touching someone near us is something good for us. I always use Ecclesiastes 7:1, 2 in funerals, where it says better is the day of death than of birth, and this is the end of all human beings, so we should take it to heart. I believe God has us suffer these losses of loved ones to remind us, to awaken us, to say, “Hey, remember, this life is not all there is. It will soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last.” The pain and feeling of loss are or at least can be very good things for us, if they remind us of how short life is, and make us think of what’s really important. These painful times are meant to remind us that we’re not to look to this life as the meaning of it all. Oh no, it’s not this life, but the next that really counts. It’s finding God that’s really the most important thing we can do during our time here.