OUR CHANGING WORLD

 

Early in the summer I had three funerals, all related to old friendships. One was for a 40-year old woman in Tyler who drowned under questionable circumstances. The authorities continue to investigate. Ouida and I knew her parents before she was born. The entire family are dear friends. It was very sad. A funeral in Dallas for another old friend who died at 97 was more of a home going celebration. A devoted Christian, she had lived many years in nursing homes where we often visited her. All through the years it was important to her that I do her funeral, which I did, assuring the few that gathered that death was the last of the beatitudes that she enjoyed in this world. Another funeral was here in Denton for a 61-year old cancer victim whom I prayed with in the hospital shortly before he died. He had the longest obituary that I have ever read at a funeral, and his many relatives created a funeral procession that stretched across much of Denton, few of whom I knew. His mother, another longtime friend, asked me to do his service. At graveside we did what the mourners had never seen before. I asked the relatives to say what they would about their beloved deceased. For several minutes brothers, sisters, nephews, cousins, children, grandchildren said a word of remembrance. When a little girl seated near where I was standing looked up to me and said quietly, “He was a good granddaddy.” I had her repeat it so that all could hear. She spoke up again, clearly enough for heaven and earth to hear, He was a good granddaddy! Now don’t you know that thrilled the heart of one dear soul who had gone up higher! It was one of those tender moments in life that we have to leave to poets to describe.

Ouida and I visited several churches in the area in early summer. I spoke for four Sundays on our heritage in Scripture and in history at the Burbank Garden Church of Christ in Grand Prairie, a suburb of Dallas, an old church that is affected by population shifts. Some found their history, which they knew little about, liberating in that they discovered they belonged to a Movement that was not sectarian at the outset. I was at the Pecan Grove Church of Christ in Greenville one Lord’s day, a church I have frequently visited through the years and always with great delight. On that particular Sunday we had a joint service with a nearby Christian Church. I also spoke for two Sundays at the Melissa Christian Church (Disciples), which was once part of a thriving farming community not far north of Dallas. It has women elders, sisters who have long been devoted to Christ and his church, and who have kept that church going when it wasn’t easy. I also “filled in” several times for teachers at our church here in Denton, teaching a variety of ages, including “single again,” high school kids, and international students, one of whom afterwards, once he accepted Christ, requested that I baptize him, probably because he saw me as an aged guru, which fits his Chinese upbringing.

Speaking of international students, hundreds of whom we have in our two universities here, we Christians need to become more global conscious. This might mean to see the world in terms of “a geography of need,” to be informed about the weightier problems of the world. The burgeoning population is an example. Every four days we have enough additional people in the world to populate another Dallas or Detroit. Every ten years we have enough additional millions to populate all of Africa and South America combined! Where will all these people live, what will they eat, how will they be housed and educated? Lest we forget, it is God’s creation that we are talking about, the world he loves.

Pope John Paul II repeatedly calls for the conversion of the western nations, which includes America, from consumerism. He says we are addicted to material goods, especially superfluous goods. Do we have an undue attachment to the passing goods of this earth? Is running up debts through impulse buying pleasing to God?, the pope asks.