The Funeral

We stood in the back, squeezed between six other groups of families and friends mourning the death of their loved ones. The candles in our hands lit,  our heads covered in scarfs, and the priest reciting different prayers from a book (chanting then followed each prayer) and performing the traditional funeral ceremony.  The caskets lay in the front as the immediate family surrounded them.  Our friend Angela's grandmother had died last weekend and we went to support her at the funeral.  This is the first funeral that I have attended since being here, and this was also the first non-believers funeral.  What do you say to someone who's loved one just died and they weren't a believer?  All the encouraging words or sayings weren't appropriate.  So we told her we loved her and were praying for her, because that is all we could do.  We couldn't tell her that her grandmother was no longer suffering or that she was in a better place, because her grandmother wasn't a believer.

Funerals in this culture are different.  In a culture that values the group above the individual I shouldn't have been surprised when the priest was doing a group funeral for Angela's grandmother and six other families.  Being at Angela's grandmother's funeral was a reminder of just how many lost people there are here in this city and country.  Not only here but around the world.  So be in pryer for Angela and her family as they go through the grieving process and that during this time their hearts would be turned to the Father.