Little Malaya

I can’t stop thinking about little Malaya. She is only nine years old and is less than three days into a long journey of crushing grief. On Tuesday, February 22 at 3:38, her precious mother, Jenny, was called home. To the horror of her family, her condition quickly deteriorated once the infection reached her blood stream. And after a several-week bout with pneumonia, she died.

I don’t know Malaya, but her uncle is a good friend of mine. I don’t know Jenny either. But thanks to technology I received daily email updates throughout this ordeal keeping me, and many other caring people, abreast of her condition. Over this two-week period, I feel like I got to know the family. It’s quite strange. I don’t know their faces and can’t recall their names, but I feel as though they are my family.

My prayer-life has been transformed over the last couple of weeks, as well. My own troubles and ambitions have been displaced by daily pleadings with God to heal Jenny’s broken body and comfort the family. Especially Malaya. It wasn’t a choice I made. The Holy Spirit compelled me.

Why? Because I simply opened my heart to a suffering family and embraced their trials – and from long distance, albeit. What would happen if every Christian approached church this way? We might better relate to scriptures like 1 Corinthians 12:26:

If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

It is my firm opinion that this is one of the prime ingredients absent in the Western church. Covenant-inspired community. Intertwined family relationships. Supportive and empathetic caring. People committed to being together. Suffering together.

So how do we do this? It will take work, time, and involvement. Emotional investment. That may look different from family to family and person to person. But I know one thing for sure:  Standing in the shadows each Sunday is not the path to this kind of a church-experience – the church-experience that Christ died for all believers to have.