IT IS deeply moving to hear people of faith saying how important faith is to them at times of personal loss. This was the case recently with the Spence family from Hillsborough Co Down as they faced up to the tragic loss of a father and his two sons in a farming accident.
Emma Spence spoke about her father and her brothers at the funeral service in their local Baptist church and people were moved by her composure and grace at the time. She ended her address with these words: "They were gentlemen, they were hard-working men, they were not perfect but they were genuine, they were best friends. They were godly men; they did not talk about God, they just did God. They were just ordinary, God made them extraordinary."
A few weeks later in Manchester, two young policewomen were killed when they answered what they believed to be a call for help but which turned out to be something quite evil. Their chief constable Sir Peter Fahy, a Roman Catholic, spoke of the pain that he and his colleagues felt. He spoke about his faith, saying that prayer was important and especially at times like this when one feels helpless.
He said "praying for the dead officers and their families was an expression of hope for them at a time of great need".
In tomorrow's gospel reading, the disciples James and John made a request to Jesus. "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory."
They are firmly told that this was not in his gift. There is always the temptation in matters religious to think more highly of oneself or one's denomination in terms of closeness to Jesus and therefore the truth. Some words from St John come to mind when we consider how Emma Spence and Peter Fahy, speaking out of different faith traditions, bore such authentic witness to the reality of God in their lives in times of distress.
"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
In the same reading, Jesus talks about his passion and death, telling his followers that they too will face pain and suffering. "The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptised, you will be baptised."
The Christian faith has never claimed that we will escape the hard knocks that life brings but we have the assurance of strength given according to need and the conviction that no matter how dark things may seem "joy cometh in the morning". That hope is explored in these words from the riches of yet another great Christian tradition. In The Diary of a Russian Priest, Alexander Elchaninov wrote: "Neither our natural attachment to life nor our courage in bearing suffering; neither earthly wisdom or even faith - however great - none of these can preserve us from sorrow for the dead. Death is a twofold phenomenon: there is the death of the departed, and the suffering and deadening in our own soul, occasioned by painful separation. [ The Christian] must not recoil when faced with suffering nor remain impotently passive before it. He must exert his spiritual powers to the utmost in order to pass through suffering, and emerge from it stronger, deeper, wiser.
"No matter if we are weak in our faith and unstable in our spiritual life - the love we bear towards the departed is not weak; and our sorrow is so deep, precisely because our love is so strong. Through the tension of our love, we too shall cross the fatal threshold which they have crossed. By an effort of
our imagination, let us enter into the world which they have entered; let us give more place in our life to that which has now become their life; and slowly, imperceptibly, our sorrow will be turned into joy which no one can take from us." - GORDON LINNEY