A better place

Having just recently gone to a wake, followed by a funeral the next day at the funeral home, I felt a deep, deep sadness.  The deceased was a grown daughter of a friend of mine....a friend for a long time.  The deceased had gotten cancer about 30 years ago and gone into successful remission.....but it came back like a freight train going 90 MPH, and did its insidious thing with her.  Her last couple of years were nothing less than horrible.  We didn't know her well at all, just enough to say "hi" whenever she was out and about.

There is something inherently sad about a child dying before a parent.  It just doesn't seem right does it?  While I was sad about that, and sad that someone we knew had passed on, I was a lot sadder about one more thing in particular.  The father and each of the three surviving siblings kept talking about how she (the deceased) was going to a better place.  I felt it would be highly inappropriate of me to ask just what that meant.

You see, as far as I know, none of the family is churched, and therefore I would be pretty sure that none has any kind of relationship with the Lord.  I'm surely not being judgmental here.  I'm just saying what I see and know of the people.  If they lack any kind of a relationship with the Lord, which seems to be the case, that is the saddest part of this whole family event. 

When we hear someone in those circumstances say "going to a better place", are they referring to heaven?  Or, perhaps, are they referring to some mystical place where because a body is dead they no longer feel any pain (such as this gal surely must have felt)?  I personally think most folks are referring to the former...heaven.  But, sadly, I sense that their idea of heaven is perhaps much different that a believers Heaven.....sadly because they are choosing a word based not on knowledge and relationship, but rather on feelings.

We will all perhaps go to a better place at the end of our lives.  What is your better place?  How would you define your better place?  How will you live to end up at your better place when your time comes?  What can we do in our lifetimes to help others really understand what "a better place" really is?

Is others had not walked alongside me, and led me to the Lord, when I was at my worst (yes, I believe a sinful life is much like a cancer that consumes ones insides), I too might be going to a better place, but surely not the better place.  A lesson !