May 3, 2006

They never stopped singing

Dear Friends:

The hardest fact of life that we face here every day is the immanent reality of death.

Babies born in Zambia can expect to die at age 37. The average for Zimbabwe is 36. HIV/AIDS is devouring young adults like a leopard among goats, but people still don't know their status. Many who succumb to the disease get listed as dying from other causes, because of shame. "So-and-so went to the hospital with TB." Around here, we all know what that means. Malaria continues to take its toll, especially among children and pregnant women. Water-borne diseases add to mortality. Malnutrition contributes as well.

So we hardly expected our first African funeral to result from garden-variety diabetes. Besides, Theresa was tall and quite thin. We associate "sugar" with overeating.

We first met her last November, while she and her husband were living on this campus, about to graduate. Their 12-year-old daughter used to play cards with Sue, but mother always chose to stay at home. Mother, we discovered, had been ill for some time. She was managing, but not very well. She had distant eyes. In January, the family left to start their new assignment. In March they asked Ted to preach for the husband's installation.

On the Sunday morning of the installation, Theresa was comatose, lying in a ward full of women, half-dead. We felt sorrow and anger over the poverty of treatment. We gave her husband extra money for some medicine and transport. We prayed for God's mercy: healing one way or the other. We left hardly knowing what to think.

Later in the week she recovered well enough to go back home, where she died a few days later. The presumable cause: lack of insulin. What that really means, of course, is lack of funds.

On the day of her funeral, uniformed ladies from the women's guild at church waited hours to claim her body. Too many deaths created a long queue at the morgue. There’s only so much space in which to wash and dress the dead. They wrapped her in a blanket, combed her thin hair, and placed the fabric-covered casket into the back of a pickup truck. Singing while they rode, Theresa’s spiritual sisters brought her home again to the compound. Then we proceeded into church.

Ted gave the sermon. Following the service, several elders opened the casket for all the mourners to pay respects.

The women began to sing, and they never stopped singing. They sang aboard the bus all the way to the cemetery. They sang while well-dressed men jumped into the grave and placed the casket. They sang while others shoveled dirt. They sang as the mound slowly rose. Their voices softened as we laid flowers atop the heap, but only when the last person left did the singing finally cease.

All around the world, death happens every day. Everywhere the rate is the same: one death to any person. It’s only that here, death seems to happen so much sooner: it alters our focus in life, we think. It affects our ministries.

The Bible says, "Death has been swallowed up in victory." What does that mean, here in these days following Easter?

What did Jesus mean? "I am the resurrection and the life."

What did Paul mean? "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."

Sharing fellowship among African believers, the Wrights look toward heaven, where there's going to be lots of singing. Yes, we continue to do what we can to improve people's lives here and now. And you are our partners. Your gifts make possible the work among orphanages, street kids, and AIDS victims. You help bring water to rural villages. You enable us to be here, offering guidance and hope.

But at the end of the day, we're all going to die unless the Lord should return suddenly first.

Still, for a Christian, the best news of all: At the end of the day comes God's tomorrow!

So keep the song going.

Yours joyfully,

Ted and Sue

The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 341

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