Last week our team attended a funeral here in Kenya. Zipporah, one of the grandmothers in
the camp we work with, had passed away.
She was 72 years old and had complications with her health since she
moved to the IDP camp years ago.
We took her to the hospital many times and prayed over her often, but
the Lord decided it was her time to go home. It was a celebration marked with sorrow and pain but also
joy and celebration.
As I stood next to her grave just minutes after people had
finished piling the dirt on her casket, I noticed another grave a few feet
away. It was her mother’s
grave. She had been buried just a
few years before, but her wooden marker was weathered beyond recognition. It was a stark contrast to the freshly
painted and written marker for Zipporah.
As I compared the two I thought about how quickly Zipporah’s post will
fade and the message be unrecognizable.
It reminded me of James chapter 4 where it says our lives are
a mist…we are here for a little while and then we vanish. Kind of depressing…but helps put things
into perspective. We aren’t
invincible; we aren’t on earth forever; life is a short gift.
When I die, I’m sure I will be mourned and thought about for a
while. However, the world will go
on…time will progress…and people will move on with their lives. I will be forgotten about soon enough
and that’s how the world works.
So I guess we all have a couple options…
One, we can work really hard to try and not be another
forgotten person. We can try to
make such a large impact that people remember us for a long time. We can proclaim our worth and make
people take notice so when we’re gone there is hopefully a gap that can’t be
filled.
Or two, we can give our lives to the Lord and follow Him on a
journey that is more about Him than us.
We can make an impact on people’s lives so that when we’re gone they
continue on because they depend on the Lord and not us. We can proclaim his worth so that when
we’re gone there is no gap to be filled because He sustains everything.
This is the legacy of Zipporah. I will undoubtedly forget about her in years to come. That may seem crass, but I honestly
don’t think Zipporah would care.
She was more concerned about Christ than people’s opinions or
perceptions of her. And so, what
will stay with me and impact me is the joy that I saw in her life. The gift she left behind of me
understanding the Father more because I saw Him in her. That….I won’t forget. That…I can’t forget.
Life is short.
How will you spend it?
