A Zeal for God and a Love for People

I was on my way to the West Coast of Madagascar to visit a couple of churches when I received a phone call informing me that my mum was taken to the hospital as an emergency as she was not feeling well. As she was not able to make it last Sunday to church to listen to me preach (and she would never miss that for anything in the world), I knew there was something really wrong. I called Lily and told her to go to the hospital with the kids. She called me back half an hour later in tears, telling me I had to come back. My mum had passed into glory.

There is so much to say to celebrate what God has done in her life and through her life. She has left quite a spiritual legacy and so many reasons to glorify God. She has shared the gospel faithfully. She did so both with the highest in the Malagasy society rungs, ministering to the wives of people in authority or army generals, and with the lowest, walking sometimes 35 miles in the countryside at age 72 to bring the Word of God to rural villages. And she was faithful both outside the home, and within the home. I remember that when I was still in my parents’ home, even as a 22/23-year-old man sometimes coming home at 1am following business meetings or time with friends, she would still wait for me as she had committed to pray with me every night, and so she did. That’s my mum. The greatest thing my mother has given me is a model of love for God and His Word. I have decided to preach on Ecclesiastes 7:1-4 for her funeral on Friday May 5^th 2018, as a tribute to her. Please pray for me, that God would find me faithful to His Word. Please pray for the service, that as her life was not in vain, so won’t be her death. And that even as we put her body in the grave, many would turn to Christ and would have, like her, the assurance of the future resurrection at the Lord’s return.