Please title this article:
We sometimes tend to think that the end of the world is near or that it is a curse from God when a major disaster occurs. If the end of the world is coming, if we take the biblical account, we will be persecuted more, and if it is God's wrath, we will be worse off. Why disasters and accidents happen, and people die or lose so much is the ultimate mystery of humanity. Of course, disasters can happen due to someone's negligence or responsibility. So people sue and are sued, and what do the winners get? In fact, they will not get back anything that they lost. In particular, your lost family and friends will never return to you the same way again. How should we, as believers, be present when people are discouraged and grieve?
I believe it is a priceless evangelistic opportunity when people are in times of sorrow. People are bewildered by the loss of possessions, immediate family members, and loved ones, and the great frustration and grief that loss brings. On the other hand, Christians actually gain a great deal by losing. We have gained a new person by losing an old one. We have also put on righteousness by forsaking our sinful nature. Of course, we cannot be completely sinless, and we cannot live forever in this body, but we do have the promise of how we can live the eternity that follows after our time in the body has ended.
When I was leading a Japanese ministry in North Carolina, I officiated at as many as five funerals a week. One of them was for the son of a Buddhist woman. She told me, "My son was born and raised as an American citizen, so a Christian funeral would be better." For a moment I thought I would refuse the funeral. But then I thought about it and realized that there would be many members of the Buddhist congregation at the funeral. Buddhists or not, people without eternal promises would be at the funeral. It was filled with people who were grieving that the person who had died was no longer there, along with a Buddhist woman who had lost her son. In other words, they were grieving that there was no hope for him who had died.
To the congregation at such a funeral, I gave a straightforward message. "I had never spoken to him before his death, so I have no idea what exactly will happen to him after his physical death. But what I can tell those of you who are alive today is that we are left with the choice to live forever." And so I spoke from the Bible about salvation from sin and the promise of eternal life in Jesus Christ and I closed my message by saying, "If you are interested, please come to our church.” It is not often that one has the opportunity to speak such a message in front of dozens of Buddhists.
If you went out into the city today and hooked up a microphone to a karaoke machine and gave a Bible message in a loud voice, how many people would be silent and listen? They would probably say, "It's grating on my ears, stop it!" But what would you think if I told someone who has lost his home, family, job, precious memories, and hopes about a treasure that will never decay? If those who know about eternal life and the One who gives it to us do not speak, who can speak to such people? Now is not the time for us to be complacent in the comfort of our own churches. If the church is the body of Christ, shouldn't we start doing what Jesus Himself would do?