Welcome News from Mike - July 2009

Printer-friendly version

As holidays go this one hasn’t been quite so bad.  We’ve had the flat for free, only a minute’s walk from a view of the Menai straight.  We’ve had two glorious days of sunshine – if you like that sort of thing.  We’ve visited various towns in the vicinity and sampled their cafés, shops, sand, slides and swings.  It’s been good, and it seems we’re surrounded by sailing boats.

There again, there was yesterday’s weather; a torrential downpour of biblical proportions that reminded me why I love North Wales; and reminded Katherine why she usually doesn’t.  Then there’s the wine glass that I broke; totally by accident, and a few other breakages too – things just seem to break around me.  Isn’t it a pain when these things happen, and it’s not even your property?  Then, of course, this morning the TV had to break down as Thomas and I were watching ‘milkshake’ – now it feels like a real holiday.

You can fret about all these things, but then you realise that they are quite trivial in the grander scheme of things.  Because I could worry about the things that disturb my peace, or I could remember that Iran is in political turmoil, Yorkshire has a BNP MEP, we’re still reeling in a massive recession, everyone’s jobs are going - and before long the environment will follow…

This week sees the funerals of two men I have recently been acquainted with.  On the surface they have some things in common.  Both died after a long drawn-out illness, and neither of them would have chosen to cross the threshold of a church building.

One of them died whilst out on his yacht.  After a long successful life he died unexpectedly whilst doing what he loved doing the most, before he lost all hope and dignity as a result of the illness that should have taken him.  The other died many years after hope had left home, and yet died surrounded by those who still loved him the most, and who could give him the dignity he couldn’t give himself.

And that got me thinking: Is there really such a thing as a good end?  Not that I’ve suddenly thought about this, but it is something I do ponder upon occasionally.  I had a friend in Wales who once thought that the best way would be on the battlefield, so he joined the French Foreign Legion.  When asked how they’d prefer to ‘go’, most of a youth group I was in agreed on ‘quick and painless’... but then what about those we leave behind?

Even as Christians we don’t like to talk about the ‘d’ word.  We create all sorts of euphemisms and idioms to cope with the idea that this life comes to a conclusion.  We even trivialise death with fairytales; but as one theologian friend of mine once said, “Each death is a tragedy of life”.  I remember a scene in the Robin Williams movie, Patch Adams, where he confronts a grumpy, terminally-ill patient, that no one else can get through to, by dressing as an angel and reciting a list of ‘kick the bucket’, ‘cash in your chips’ style alternatives (there could be an evangelism lesson in there somewhere…).

I’m fascinated by the ancient Egyptians.  It seems to me that there existed a people who developed a whole military, xenophobic, culturally rich and complex religious and political system based simply around the fear of death.  Ironically most of their legacy was stolen by grave- robbers long before we learnt about them.  Does it matter what we leave behind?

Our legacy seems important?  I think it was the rock singer, Paul Weller, who said that there is no love like ‘the love of the loved’.  Many people are loved greater than they ever know, and sometimes it’s too late to respond to that love – usually we don’t learn how special a person is until the eulogies are rolled out.

I heard of a church some years ago that arranged a funeral for one of its long-standing Sunday-school teachers.  So, of course, generations of kids, ex-church-members and the results of this great woman’s ministry came to church that day to pay their respects and share their testimonies.  The good news for her was that she was far from deceased.  They’d arranged this memorial in order that she would never not-know the impact that she had made on the lives of others; and never have to wait for eternity before someone said, “Well done, good and faithful servant”.

Why do we do funerals the way we do?  Does it matter that we go through all the ceremony, the religious trappings - the ‘hocus-pocus’, as one man put it?  Why are we so content to celebrate a person’s life after they’ve passed, and yet can’t bring ourselves to honestly face them, forgive them, and honour them when they are with us, before it’s too late?  Is that why we do it?

Both of the men whom I mentioned earlier in this article were suffering from illnesses that would have, and essentially did, take their lives from them.  Life is a terminal illness.  The Psalmist says that men are like grass.  We will wither away; we will die; it’s written in our DNA.  I am in my mid-thirties and I already know that at least a dozen people I went to school with have left this mortal coil.  If you are older than me then those figures will increase.  The clock is ticking; life is precious.

Many years ago I was watching the film, Titanic, and a friend and I got to wondering.  If we were told we only had three hours left to live, what would we want to do?  Where would we want to go?  Who would we want talk to?  But most importantly, if these things are so important to us, why haven’t we done them already?

You may be thinking that this has been a dreary article -fancy talking about death on a day like this.  It was intended to make you think, but not just an ‘mm... what if’ sort of ‘think’.  The ‘think’ I’m hoping you’d be thinking would be in a life-changing sort.  There are many things you can put off in life: that conversation, that talk with a friend, that act of forgiveness, that act of repentance, or amends, that talk with God, that long-distance phone call...

This article is about those things that matter in this life.  What we build here leaves echoes through eternity.  What we bind here is bound in the here-after.  The seed we sow here will grow to fruit at the resurrection.

The other day I heard about a man who, after many years of living in Australia, came back to visit his brother and sister, and he made the decision that, though he was nearer his brother, he’d travel up north and visit his sister first.  He figured that since the weather forecast was good for the weekend he’d let his brother go out on his yacht and he might as well see him when he came back...  You can miss the boat.

Mike