Monday, April 4, 2016

IT’S NOT HOW YOU GO… IT’S WHERE YOU GO


Along the streets of Togo, and many other West African countries, casket makers ply their trade.  They seem to have taken on the role of helping those who die to make a last statement when they pass from this world into the next.  You may see a casket shaped as a fish, a car, a truck, a rocket, and yes even a helicopter or a flip flop.  When a person passes away there is a certain amount of protocol that must be followed based on their position in society.  Sometimes bodies are held for weeks as they order a special fabric to be designed for funeral clothes in honor of the deceased.  Included with the appropriate ceremony is the burial in a very distinctive coffin.  As we saw these helicopter and flip flop coffins we couldn’t help but think that as children of God we will not need an aircraft to take us up to heaven and we sure won’t be wearing flip flops as we walk those streets of gold.

1 Thessalonians 4:16
16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.