Eternal life and eternal peace

What can you say to a double orphan? You mean a child where both his or her parents have died? It is too easy to use words like orphans, double orphans or OVCs when in fact you are talking about children of all ages, boys and girls who are in shock, grieving, mourning the death of a mom or dad who loved them and who they loved dearly and were dependent on.

But then that may not be the reality either. Maybe there was only a mother in their lives, or as an exception only a father, or very possibly a grandparent, mainly a grandmother who has become a carer for an extended family.

Again excuse the generalised term. This grandmother may be caring for a number of grandchildren who had different mothers and fathers and all of whom are now becoming a new type of family unit. Maybe there was abuse rather than love in the home.

Whatever the reality, for me it is all about family life and family relationships of one kind or another. The child-headed family, where there is no granny, is a family unit in terms of the SA National Family Policy and in the eyes of God, a little domestic church.

Dare we even call it irregular or abnormal? Sure, it is not the ideal in terms of God’s plan for a family to be built on a committed marriage of man and woman, but it is nevertheless a reality.

The Church tends to focus on structure, to some extent. The government and the family policy, which has been put out for general discussion in the form of a Green Paper, focuses on functioning rather than structure. I believe we could do well too to focus on the spiritual and emotional side.

How are the two or more children making up the child-headed household/family coping with the death of their parents?  Anyone who has experienced death in their family, lost a parent or a child or an older person, knows the pain it causes.

Being left impoverished makes it worse but can also displace the emotional side. Putting bread on the table, having money for transport and school fees and uniforms become primary survival need burdens, but the grieving, the dealing with anger, guilt, depression and extreme sadness also have to be worked through.

Teachers tell us that when a motivated, achieving child’s quality of work suffers, they need to look at what is happening at home. Some schools do have the resources to cope with this, but in many of the schools in areas most hit by the continuing Aids epidemic, the high number of children and the high proportion of those who are orphaned children becomes an enormous burden.

Food parcels can be provided and school fees paid, but if the Church exists to evangelise, where is Jesus, a suffering, loving Jesus in the equation? Is he present directly or indirectly in the Church workers and home-based carers? Is he present in the loving support offered by other families willing to share their lives and resources?

That does not seem to be the case. Traditionally, it used to be said, there are no orphans in Africa. But now there are, hundreds of thousands. They live in mini-family structures, or pseudo-family structures. Carers are surrogate parents.

With a true, comprehensive family focus in Church life, in other words taking the image Church As Family really to heart, we should be challenged to do more. How can the Church be a family when our little home churches are so broken?

Our November family theme is “eternal rest, eternal peace”. Maybe all those who have died are on the way to achieving that, but I can’t help but wonder if maybe too their concern for their little ones left parentless will limit their sense of eternal peace. Maybe they could have done more to avoid the situation. That is for God to judge.

Are we as family people—which we all are—doing our best to prepare for the time when we will enter eternal life and will it be one of eternal peace?