I come to you hesitantly, because I am unworthy and imperfect. It is only through Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of my faith, that I even dare approach you.
Your Word says, “Learn from the ant, you sluggard” (Proverbs 6:6). Your Word also says, “A bruised reed, you will not break” (Isaiah 42:3). You see it all – the big picture and the intricate details. You know all about my problem with procrastination. And so I lay it before you, in your presence, with shame but without trying to cover it up with busy-busy-bustling-about. I may distract myself with pointless busyness, but you see it all.
Our hearts are confusing. I don’t even understand my own mind. You see it all though. What I see is this: cluttered cupboards, boxes of books I bought intending to read ‘one day’, projects ‘put on the back burner’ indefinitely, and frantic frenzy as deadlines approach.
I suspect that these symptoms of my malaise bother you less than they do me. For you see deeper than clutter and chaos. You see fear of failure and perils of perfectionism. You see our culture’s lust for leisure, greed for instant gratification and our corresponding short attention spans. You see us living in our brokenness, failing to live up to our identity as your holy people.
I confess that I have not taken every thought captive to you, most holy Lord. Please forgive me and change me. Transform me, mostly for your glory’s sake but also for my sanity’s sake.
As I face the rest of the day, please keep my heart soft towards you, El Roi, the God who sees me. Keep me focused on you, Lord Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of my faith. Holy Spirit, please free me from my fears and enable me to focus on the responsibilities you have entrusted to me.
Thank you for your patience, your presence and your precious promises.
Yours sincerely,
An imperfect procrastinator who is being transformed through the renewing of her mind, slowly but surely – your daughter
“The family is Christian or Muslim,” my teacher commented.
It was Friday evening in Eastern Australia, though only mid-afternoon in South Asia. We were meeting for our lesson over WhatsApp video. I am the student. We both have access to the same lesson outlines and resources. In this case, we were looking at a strip story of three people by a grave.
This ‘strip story is from a book called ‘Lexicarry’, by Patrick R. Moran (Pro Lingua Associates; Kindle Edition, 2017) p.8
As I had prepared this lesson, I had refreshed in my memory the following vocabulary items:
To be sad
To die
A grave
To cry
I did not know how to say, “I am so sorry for your loss,” but I was anticipating learning how to express this from this little strip story.
In the end, I learnt far more about culture from this activity than I learnt about language.
Interesting timing
The timing for a lesson on death was interesting. I didn’t plan it this way. It is just where I am up up to in the curriculum we’re using.
My teacher’s country of residence is currently in the grip of the pandemic, you see. Every day at the moment, the media reports the deaths of several thousand people – deaths which have been directly attributed to this virus. Covid-19 is is a contributing factor to a great many more deaths too, whether directly or indirectly.
The sheer magnitude of death and suffering is unfathomable. Most of my friends living in that part of the world, it seems, know at least somebody who has lost their life to this virus.
In faltering language, I say that that what I see of her country in news reports is terrible.
My teacher agrees and teaches me the phrase, “The situation in this country is very serious.”
Bodies and death
We examine the little strip story of a family around a grave, and I do my best to describe what is happening in the pictures. Three people are standing around a grave. Maybe one of their family members has passed away. The people are sad. The woman is crying.
My teacher makes an observation that I had missed. “The family is Christian or Muslim,” she states. “Only Christians or Muslims bury their dead. Everyone else here cremates them.”
For the first time, this little strip story strikes me as being incongruous with her culture. Of course most people there don’t bury their dead. I should know that, for day after day, in the media, I see heart-breaking scenes of funeral pyre after funeral pyre after funeral pyre.
My teacher teaches me the phrase for ‘cremation’. It literally means ‘to burn the corpse’. The phrase for a grave, however, such as that pictured in the strip story, literally means ‘the place where the body is hidden’.
Customs
Why do Christians and Muslims bury their dead, while Hindus and Buddhists burn them?
I am no expert but it occurs to me that these different ways of dealing with the remains of our loved ones reflects our understanding of what happens after death.
Forgive the gross oversimplification of my explanation of major world religions, but bear with me as I attempt to make sense of our different funeral rites.
Christians and Muslims both believe in one life, one death and one resurrection to judgement. Is it any wonder, then, that we bury the bodies of the dead to keep them ready for that day?
Hindus and Buddhists, on the other hand, believe in life forces that migrate from one ‘sentient being’ to another. Is it any wonder, then, that people burn the bodies of the deceased so that the life force may move on unhindered?
Differences in worldview
The different ways we interpret death and deal with the remains of those we love is just one example of how we see the world quite differently. It is as though we are observing life through glasses with different coloured lenses.
I am reading a book on this matter of ‘worldview’ these days. The author, James Sire, outlines some of the key differences in how people view the world. He suggests seven main areas … or perhaps eight.
1. What is prime reality – the ‘really real’?
2. What is the nature of external reality (that is, the world around us)?
3. What is a human being?
4. What happens to a person at death?
5. Why is it possible to know anything at all?
6. How do we know what is right and wrong?
7. What is the meaning of human history?
And perhaps 8. What personal, life-orienting core commitments are consistent with this worldview?
Fear not – I’m not going to go through these one by one. Not today, at any rate. I am simply observing that we interpret the world around us in very different ways.
And specifically I am thinking about how different people would answer the fourth question about death.
Beliefs
My teacher has grown up in a community in which there is no awareness of a Creator or Sustainer. Rather, there is a sense of everything being part of the one. Death is not the end of life, then, according to that worldview, but simply a transition.
The figures in my strip story, however, apparently belong to a community in which people acknowledge a Creator and Moral Judge. (Though I acknowledge that in the country I call ‘home’, many people don’t actually know what they believe these days.) Death is the end of life … or at least life as we know it. Judgement will be based on how well we lived. Thank God … quite literally … for the Christian doctrine of the atonement in which Jesus’ righteousness is imputed to us who believe.
What matters, of course, is the question of truth. What IS truth? What is the ‘prime reality’? What is the ‘external reality’? Who are we? And so on.
In other words, what is a biblical worldview?
Communication
When I think long and hard about different worldviews, my head feels like it just might burst. I’m no philosopher.
Thankfully, like me, my teacher is not a complicated lady. She is just an ordinary woman muddling her way through life, doing her very best to live well.
Part of that involves spending hours with me each week, patiently giving me the opportunity to mangle her language. For that I am grateful.
As we spend time together, we share stories. I show her pictures of my father’s grave. I share with her the precious hope expressed in the words we had engraved on his headstone – ‘… absent from the body, present with the Lord.’ (These words come from the Bible – 2 Corinthians 5:8.)
This is not preaching. This is simply sharing life.
Hope
Here in Australia, most of us cannot fathom the depth of suffering that many people are enduring in some other parts of the world.
I don’t even know quite how to pray during this time. Of course, I want the people I know and care about to stay safe and well. I want them to be spared grief and pain. That’s only natural and I do pray for that.
At the same time, I pray that my friends will have hope. Real hope. Hope based not on the way one views the world, but on truth.
Regardless of whether one’s corpse is buried, burned, cryo-preserved (frozen), or consumed by crocodiles, the Bible teaches that if one dies in Christ, there is hope.
“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.…” “Therefore encourage one another with these words.”
1 Thessalonians 4:13-14, 18 ESV
Many of my friends living in South Asia, like the writer of the passage above, do believe that Jesus died and rose again. In him they have hope. Their faith has impacted their worldviews. May those around be touched by this hope too.
By the end of that lesson, I knew a smattering more vocabulary and a lot more culture. I never did learn how to say ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’ My teacher seemed to think it more appropriate to say, “There, there, don’t be sad.”
