October OUTLOOK

Greetings and salutations, Southill Parish! 

What a glorious October this promises to be!  To be honest, every month is glorious; in fact, time is glorious.  God allots each of us a finite amount of it.  Once created, we begin to decay, with time running out.  For us, the clock is ticking.  What to do, oh, what to do?

We aren’t immortal, are we?  We survive for a while, doing the best we can for our family, friends, and neighbours.  Then as the prayer goes, “the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over and our work is done.”  Christians appreciate, or are expected to appreciate, that the time that is given to us here on earth, is blessed or hallowed by God.  That is why I call it glorious.  As it is God given, as it is through His love and mercy that we even have time to do anything, it is full of God’s Glory…and we are blessed by this.  Thus, it is right to give God glory, in return.  To honour God is the natural response to His great gift to us of time. 

We honour each other by leading our lives in the best possible way, prayerfully, and with love and respect for family, our friends, neighbours and ourselves.  But when we pass away or move on, we make room for others to experience life.  Those who remain, who are left, continue to use the time God has given them as wisely and fruitfully as possible.  Oh certainly, we pay our respects to the deceased, naturally.  We honour them, as well, by paying tribute to their life, comforting those who mourn their parting, and then by continuing our use of the time, which God has left for us to walk this earth.

Life and death are natural occurrences.  They are absolutes.  No human is immortal.  Immortality is for fantasy novels and video games.  Therefore, when we celebrate the life of the deceased, it is not right to use symbols of immortality.  When we wish to honour the deceased, we honour them with symbols of life and death, together, such as fresh flowers.  Fresh cut flowers are vibrant, full of life, and yet are already fading.  When we place them at the grave of someone we love, we honour them.  It signifies our understanding of the life cycle God grants us.  As we turn away from the grave, as we return to the world that remains to us, the fresh flowers that remain are naturally dealt with.  If we wish, upon our next visit, we may place a fresh symbol of our love and affection.  But, what is not right is the expectation that after we leave the flowers remain there, always.  We do not remain; the flowers do not remain.

I believe that God holds all souls, both living and departed, in His heart.  I pray that the departed, through Christ, are resting undisturbed in the bosom of our Lord, or “under the shadow of His wing.”  I cannot believe that our loved ones reside in those graves, just waiting for our next visit.  As a Christian, I believe that our souls return to the Lord, no longer residing in our mortal remains.  Likewise, the Church acknowledges that the graveyard is a burial ground for our mortal remains, not a hotel for our souls.  It encourages us to grieve, to mourn, and more importantly, to celebrate God’s good gift of the time we shared with the departed.  However, we are encouraged to honour God by focusing on the living, not the dead.  Someone once said that ‘the Church is for the Living.’  Yes, I totally agree.  I would add, then, that the churchyard is for the dead.

Continue to honour the dead with fresh flowers as symbols of life and death, not artificial flowers as they are symbols of immortality.  Continue to thank God for our friends and relatives now departed from this life, but ever mindful of the living.

Yours in Christ,                       

Mark-Aaron +