Sad times, joyful times

I write this entry at a time of great sadness. Our much loved church secretary, Dick Cole, who was in fact the sole leader of our church for decades before I arrived, has passed from us. We all feel truly bereft and wondering where we go from here.

The memorial service is billed as a celebration of his life. It was an active life well lived, a cause for many happy memories. The celebratory funeral is frequently called for nowadays – for people to be happy for the life of someone rather than grieve because they’ve passed away.

At the same time, we would all surely agree with the old piece of wisdom says that you have to give people space to grieve – permission to feel sad and lost because somebody that they loved has gone. If you deny them this, you may deprive them of an important means of expressing what they may really feel and, indeed, of moving on.

I know this is by no means the intention of the family in this case. They nurse a great sense of sadness and pain and, I am sure, understand that others will react in the same way too.

In thinking about how Jesus would respond to all of this, I found myself turning to John’s Gospel, where He spoke to His followers about the time when He would no longer be with them on earth. He was trying to prepare them for the event, although they were unable to cope with it and mostly blanked it out of their minds. This is what He told them:

“But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you have asked me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you” (John 16:5-8 ESV)

And then Jesus outlined all the benefits that the Holy Spirit would grant to His followers. He would indeed express the mind of the risen and triumphant Jesus, now reigning in heaven, guiding and directing His people still on Earth.

We can all think how great it would have been had Jesus stayed on: how many more miracles would have been performed, how many more questions answered, how much more depth of impact achieved for the people that Jesus was trying to lead. On the other hand, His sphere of influence did not extend much outside His native area of Palestine in His earthbound days. With the coming of the Holy Spirit the message was able to go, as the Bible says, all through Judea and Samaria and away to the ends of the Earth. It is only by His leaving for heaven that we in our country and day have been able to hear the message and benefit from it. While sharing the first disciples’ disappointment that He had to leave this earth, we rejoice in the outcome.

I guess we were all praying that our church secretary would recover: he certainly put up a tremendous fight for life. But now that he has gone it is just possible that we will be able to face up to certain realities which perhaps we avoided in time past. These are issues we need to grasp hold of in our little fellowship as we face the future. Maybe the cause of Jesus Christ in our village and beyond will benefit as we grapple with these things. Maybe this is a page in the book of our history which was waiting for a line to be drawn at the end of it. That line can only now be drawn and a new page turned. It is to the credit of our secretary, and builds on his legacy, if we can now make up our minds and turn that page.