Buried in the Kitchen Floor

The other day I was reading the local paper, Sunstar, and came across a story that I still find hard to conceive of. A grandfather had been reprimanded by the officials for burying his newborn granddaughter in the dirt of the kitchen floor. Now, I know that it is illegal to just bury someone anywhere but this had to be the most sad incident I have ever heard of.

The child died shortly after being born at home. By now you have all realized that the family is poor. The child died at birth, the kitchen floor was dirt and in a Roman Catholic country burying someone in unholy ground is the same as sending them to hell. Can you imagine what that was like to be digging a hole in the kitchen to bury your granddaughter? What was it like to be the mother in the next room, if the house had more than one room? What was it like to have bury the tiny body in the floor because you do not have any place else?

The local government did not send them to jail. They exhumed the body and buried it in "holy" ground. Then they warned the family to not do it again.

What kind of world do we live in where this kind of thing happens? Please pray that Carol and I will figure out further ways to be Jesus in this community.

Two Saturdays out of Three

I will be attending a funeral this Saturday, February 17. That will make two Saturdays out of three. Sometimes it is just to often to be reminded about our mortality. The funeral two weeks ago was a person that was elderly (funny how relative that term becomes) but this time it is a man who died of cancer and is much younger than I am.

I suppose that is the dividing line. People older than I am are "ready" and those younger are "not." That probably says a lot about myself and my less than desirable attitude towards aging.

I have been reading Randy Alcorn's Heaven and finding myself saying, "Yes, of course, why didn't I think of that?" It is such a well balanced presentation of a topic that can quickly become unbalanced. Anyway, these two concepts have much to inform each other about, namely that heaven does change how I think about mortality.