It's been a week since I turned 3 score and 4 years old - that's 64, for those who don't know what's a score (=20). And if I add up 6+4 = 10, which biblically means God's authority, completeness, order, and divine perfection. I like to take that as my life being ordered into the fullness of divine authority that God has blessed me with on this side of earth. Our family mode of celebrating birthdays is very simple; it's just a makan get-together with my brother praying over the one whose birthday is being celebrated.
I left it to the young ones to decide where to eat, since I eat everything/anything. The watsapp discussions went back and forth; from steam-boat, to Japanese to Chinese. The steam-boat place was too far. The Jap place charged $100/pax to reserve a place for the 8 of us. (Ya, crazy.) So in the end it was the simple, comparatively cheaper Chinese open-air kopi-tiam round the corner of my house. Which was fine actually. This year the bday take was slightly different. There were 3 more added to our usual 5 in the immediate family - my son-in-law (husband of no 2), back from US on his holiday break, and the 2 significant others of my no 1 and no 3, totalling 8. 8 is another number I like, coz it means a new beginning, a new order, a "born again" event. No, I am not "into" numbers to buy lottery tickets. It's just that many times God uses numbers to speak to me.
As usual my brother did the honors to pray for the bday "girl", as a dearly-loved brother and a Pastor. Can't get better than that. But this time, I felt I should pray too; for my bday wish. So it was I raised my petition to the One who sits enthroned in heaven and on earth, who knows all our hearts. I told God my one and only birthday wish was simply that as He had blessed me with my immediate family, He would rope in all who were seated at the table that nite to be in His family, and that all would be blessed to know Him personally. It did not matter to me what anyone thought of my prayer-wish. I had articulated it aloud in the physical and spiritual realms, declaring God's own desire to save all.
Indeed I felt very blessed by the love of my nearest, dearest and now extended family. The next day I met up with an old fren for lunch. We go back at least 10 years, when she was running a restaurant in the busy KL Chinatown area with her husband. I would sometimes visit them on my street ministry days to reach out to her workers. We kinda lost touch when her husband passed on from cancer. She had a tough time dealing with this and many other family issues.
As much as I try to help, ultimately I know only God can mend broken hearts - and that only if we let Him. Some people are so disappointed why/how God could "let" bad things happen that they totally turn away, disgusted by a God who doesn't seem to care or have the power to do anything to prevent the bad from happening. That's not true; God always cares, but all humans have to go through the "wilderness" experience, when God seems to be absent. Jesus Himself went through it. No human is exempt from those tough times. I could only pray for this sister, that she wouldn't choose to turn her back on God.
So I was really glad to be able to catch up with her again, after like some 4 or 5 years. In her own words, she went through hell. In 18 months, she lost 3 beloved family members, some time after her husband's demise. An elderly one died due to covid. Then a middle-aged relative succumbed to cancer exacerbated by covid. And the shocker was a young seemingly successful female relative who jumped from her condo building in the middle of the nite. The worse part was my fren is working in the funeral business, and she had to see to all the funeral arrangements for all of them. There were tears in her eyes as she recalled how she had to piece together the body parts of the one who had committed suicide. I cannot imagine her pain. How did she cope? She said she had to hang onto God, for that was all she had to hang onto, in the end. I knew when she said that, she would be ok. Truly we all grieve when death and suffering strikes.
But in the midst of a very bad (and worsening) world, those who choose to believe the God of the Bible know He is good. Jesus Christ experienced everything that was bad in the human world. He knew hunger, pain, rejection, torture, and a horrible death on a cross. But out of the greatest bad, when He walked out of the tomb, fully alive, came the greatest good - for all of mankind. God through Christ proved there is hope and redemption beyond all the bad, beyond the pain, beyond death. My fren went thru hell, but she has emerged alive and stronger. She is no longer angry or disappointed with God; she has His peace, which is truly beyond all human understanding.
Yet she confesses she feels guilty because she isn't doing enough, as she is no longer involved in "church ministry" which she used to be so active in before. She is "only" in the funeral business, part of which entails communicating with bereaved family members. It's never easy talking about death, what more literally "handling" death. I have to tell her it's not about church. Christians are so used to thinking of "ministry" as only applying to "church work." If we do things outside on individual basis on our own, without involving the "official" church , we think it's not counted as "ministry." I have to tell her that's a lie. I know many Christians who are quietly ministering to people around them. Like the sister who herself has health problems but still drives a neighbor out to pay an assessment bill. Or the lady who voluntarily uses her own 4WD to drive a group of Christians weekly all the way from KL to Johor, into orang asli villages situated deep in the interior. They are all volunteers, from different churches, different backgrounds.
I am very sure God calls them His ministers, even if church may not count them as such, even if church doesn't know at all. Angels already recorded their deeds in heaven. These nameless faceless ones are not preachers waxing eloquent from a pulpit, they may not be prayer warriors, banging on heaven's door 10 hours a day, they may not even know how to talk about Jesus to others. But they minister to those around them who are in need, just by loving others as Jesus did. So I tell this sister she doesn't need to compare with anybody else. She's doing ministry all right, where God has put her in the very midst of death, to give that last human touch of life to a dead body, she is caring for those left behind to mourn.
As I think about this dear sister/fren who has seen and will continue to see death in all its ugliness, I thank God for birthdays. Birth-days are the direct opposite of death; birth is a celebration of life. I am especially thankful that for those who experience the "born again" life in Christ Jesus, death does not have the last say.
"When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”...thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." - 1 Corinthians 15:55, 57
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