The Rest of the Story...

Four posts ago ("Fifteen Minutes in My Shoes" on October 8) I mentioned that two Ghanaians from our congregation had passed away unexpectedly. Since then a touchingly ironic episode has come to light, and so I wanted to share the rest of the story.


As of our church business meeting on the first Saturday of the month, only one of the men had passed away, and we were discussing how to help his family in Ghana. The Ghanaians told us of their custom of collecting money to help the family and wanted to establish a church rule to do this each time a death occurs. The Italians explained that their custom is to encourage good works in honor of the deceased, as the remaining family members are usually not left in dire financial straits, as is a family in Ghana who loses the man of the house. Instead of making a church rule for a cultural practice not specifically commanded by the Bible, we agreed to set a date for a special collection, for anyone to give as they decided in their heart to do.


Sunday after church, one of the Ghanaian men pulled aside one of the Italian church leaders to tell him he had been wrong about these circumstances not appearing in the Bible. Some of the Italians and Ghanaians remembered seeing these two men talking, but we did not know the content of their conversation until the next week. The Ghanaian had pointed out James 1:27:

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:

to look after orphans and widows in their distress

and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

Little did he know that within 48 hours he would have a heart attack and leave behind a widow and six children, and we would be discussing how to help care for them, too.


To all who know the special significance of this post's appearing on this date: Thank you for putting this verse into action and for all the ways you have supported and prayed for our family. We love and appreciate you more than you could ever know!


And now for the real rest of the story, for all Christians, as depicted by C.S. Lewis in the closing lines of The Last Battle:


"And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."