by As a young girl, I loved attending funerals. May be it was the somber mood appealing to the melancholic in me; but I loved (still do) funeral hymns and how at funerals we got to sing songs of hope and heaven and the resurrection and eternal rewards; how we got to think of dying as going to a better place rather than as a terrible thing that happened; how we got to hear hard truths and ask hard questions that we might otherwise gloss over on an ordinary day.
You see on a random Wednesday, you don’t want someone asking you if you are ready to die. Or asking you if you have thought about where you are going once you die.
On a random day, we are eternal. We will be here forever. And we live like the rich young fool in Jesus parable, planting vineyards and extending our barns, drawing up 20 years strategic plans, worrying about the future, imagining we are fixing the world.
Then death shocks us. Death makes us stop. We are stunned. We falter. We realise we are not the immortals. We realise death is so much closer than we ever let ourselves think. We ask questions. Why? How? How now? Why, again? How long are we ourselves around? Are we ready to go? Are we ready to be left? What are we living for? How are we leaving? Where are we going? How are those being left behind ever going to be?
We ask God hard questions. Does He know what He is doing? Why now? How does the death of a young child or mother become his will? How will the death of a father ever work out for good for his children? Who did wrong? Why are we being punished? Why did God allow that?
When we stare at the dead body of someone we know, we realise that really, man is like grass, here today gone tomorrow. God doesn’t owe us anything. Caskets remind us that life is transient; we are all walking each other other home; just that some go ahead. Death reminds us we are mortal, and frail and oh so very organic, moments away from becoming rotting stinking flesh. All those strategic plans and plus size barns and dreams and achievements and accolades mean nothing when we are met by our own mortality. We can’t say no. We can’t say we are not ready. When the Maker calls, ready or not we go. Yes, our pain, struggles and frustrations come to an end, but also do our dreams, desires, plans, joys and pleasures.
So attend funerals.
They will teach you how to live and how to die. Its easy to be shaken by the death of a loved one but soon move on, barely missing a stride, the person slowly erased from our consciousness. But when we attend a funeral we get to pause and ponder over how someone lived and how they died. If they lived really well, we leave that funeral challenged comforted that their life mattered to so many people and so many causes and accomplished so much, and may be we carry some lessons that we can apply in our lives. If the deceased lived badly, we want to go home and live better so our funeral is not a sad and scandalous comedy, with eulogies that sound like a LinkedIn profile.
There are two kinds of eulogies. Three actually. First are the lying tributes, where we say what a great person you were when we all know you were a selfish, greedy, society wrecking rat and the village is all the more better with your demise.
Then there are those given by people who barely knew you, may be people sent by the office or school or church to satisfy a requirement aka tick a box. They speak of our education, baptism, conversion, career, leadership… all the stuff you will find on a LinkedIn profile. Then there are the tributes given by people who truly shared our lives. It is a beautiful funeral where tributes are the second kind — given by people who knew you and lived with you and loved you, people whose lives will be a little less (something) once you are gone. These people will tell of the days we ugly cried in the bathroom or the day we went for a ruracio and had running tummies all the way back home, the day so-and-so’s baby was born and we rushed to hospital in the middle of the night… and these stories will make you laugh and cry and smile and want to live life fully, connecting with people, loving and being loved.
Listen to the eulogies. See what people remember about others once they are gone : the actions, the words, the heart that is left behind. See the lives they touched. Kids they paid school fees for. A mama mboga they bought from. A sunday school class they taught. A niece they routinely encouraged. An intern they gave a job. Be encouraged and comforted that the departed lived their life for all its worth. Their work is done. Yours remains. What are you doing with it now that you know it can be taken any time? What will be said of you? Whose life will you touch? What difference can you make? Who will remember you fondly? Who will fight for your name and fame? Our good works follow us where we go. Will anything survive the fire on God’s final day or we will be like those who come out smelling of smoke?
At the funeral, you will see those who are hurting with grief and you will cry with them and love them and they will be comforted. You will pity them. And be grateful that today it is not you. You will go home with a deeper appreciation of life and family and friends and church. You will see how strangers came through for a family while close kin bickered. Or how a church refused to bury a father because he hadn’t taken communion in years. Or how sons begin fighting over property even before their father’s body is cold. May be you will see the good like family pulling together in great difficulty to weather this storm as one unit. And you will go back home and hug your child tighter, and pray for your spouse a little longer, and call your mother just to tell her that you are thinking about her… you will even start a whatsapp group for family or high school mates to keep in touch because you realize life is fleeting and we alll need each other.
Attend the funeral. It will teach you humility. You will realise, even if just for that day, that life is a gift, and even your next breath is not guaranteed. You did not do anything to deserve to live today. Those who have left did nothing wrong to go. It’s just the way of the world. and while it hurts and is unfair, we can’t bring them back; only join them. So we enjoy today. We live purposely today. We don’t wait for the degree or job or spouse or child to enjoy life. We know people who died days after getting their PhDs or getting married. Life is not out there to be lived when you accomplish certain goals. Life is when you have it. Live purposefully today. Pursue life today. Love today. call today. Have that coffee date. wear the pretty dress. travel. Hug. Give. Save. Set up the investment or life insurance. Stop to watch the sunset or to stare at the drunken man down the street. Life is for living when you have it.
Funerals will teach you how to hold onto life a little less tightly. Not only do dead men tell no tales, they cease from their labours and anxieties and worries. What weights and burdens and grudges and anxieties are you carrying that will mean nothing tomorrow if you are gone? What is filling up your time that has zero eternal value, in fact no value beyond today? What’s of eternal value that you could be preoccupied with instead of wasting your life? How are you wasting your life?
The inevitability of death should also remind who keeps us alive. God keeps us alive (Psalm 66:9). How many times he has moved the plague from our door and hidden us where no harm could reach us. Surely, we have escaped like a bird from the fowler’s snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped. Like the preacher said in Ecclesiastes 12: 11 may we remember our Creator in the days of our youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which we will say, “I have no pleasure in them”. A funeral is a place to say thank you Lord, for life that we have, for loved ones still with us, for dreams we can still pursue, for good health and sober minds. A funeral is a place to slow down and get our hearts softened to what God is always doing around us.
A funeral finally is a place will reorient our gaze to the eternal. Like those funeral hymns I listened to as a child, may the service help us turn our eyes from the temporal to the coming King, and to the decision of whether we want to be part of that Kingdom. We will be reminded that it is ordained for man to die and one day to meet his Maker; that in death we sleep, to resurrect to a new life with Christ or to eternal death. We will be reminded that there are decisions we need to make today about this eternal destiny. Do we want to taste death twice? Funerals are like a great mission field or evangelistic rally. I believe no funeral should be completed without a call for people to make that most important decision to choose life, eternal life, so that when our time comes, we are not scared. Like Apostle Paul we will say, for to die is gain and to be away from the body is to be present with the Lord. And because death come s like a thief, we will want to live ready, with our garments on, unsoiled, lest we be caught naked and unawares.
Finally, “brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.” 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
