Goodbye....for now

As I sat in the old-fashioned German Baptist church for my grandmother’s funeral, I couldn’t help be struck by the diversity of the audience that had gathered to pay tribute to Grandma.

It was a traditional German Baptist funeral. Have you ever seen Little House on the Prairie? The church is like a modern version of that church. Plain and simple, hard wood seats, white washed walls, and teeny tiny hymn books. The clergy members were even dressed like the Rev. on Little House. They looked like they had stepped right out of the 1800’s.

So you have this very old-fashioned environment and this very, very conservative group of German Baptists ministers leading the service. You also had a small number of church members who participated in the service.

Then you had Grandma’s family: sons, daughters, grandchildren, great grand children, spouses, etc.  None of us are German Baptist. Most are Christian, but all of us brought a more modern flavor to the setting. While most are Christian, some are Nazarene, some Presbyterian, others Methodist, and so on.

We all represent various social classes and represent different careers. Some ministers, some nurses or medical professionals. Others are truck drivers, machinists, mechanics, and several retired.

All this diversity, brought together by my mild, meek, humble, quite Grandmother.

One of the ministers preached about the distinctive doctrines of the German Baptist church, as if he were going to set us all straight about non-conformism and other interesting doctrinal points-of-view.  Grandma would have liked the sermon. She was very devout, but never pushed it on others aggressively.

While there were numerous Scripture readings about the Good Shepherd and peace, the Scripture that kept coming to my mind was 1 John 3:

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

It’s funny how your mind works as you sit in a funeral.  The minister was speaking, but I was thinking about this passage. I was thinking about how happy I was for my Grandmother who was realizing the promise packed in these words.  We don’t really know what happens when we pass on to the other side after death, but that Scripture promises to us that we will be made like Christ in his new, post-resurrection form.

That is a promise that transcends any doctrinal differences this diverse group of people may have had among themselves. We may not have been dressed alike. We may not have worshipped alike.  We may not have even really known each other all that well--well, at least some of us.

But there were two common denominators for most folks in that room.

The first? Grandma. She was the reason we were there.

The second? Most everyone in that room shared a common faith in Christ as Savior and a confidence in the truth behind that passage in 1 John 3.  For a believer in Christ, faith in this truth is the pay off, even as we grieve the loss of a special, sweet individual who lived an incredible life over 97 years.

In spite of our diversity, our common faith allowed us to say good bye to a mother, grandmother, sister and friend.

Not forever. Just for now.

See you soon Grandma.