Above the Ground

After having lunch with my pastor and the Director of Family Life at our church, I exited the restaurant and walked across the street at the pedestrian crosswalk. A man of about forty greeted me with a “Hello” as I met him. I quickly responded, “Hello. How are you doing?” As he walked past me he cheerfully replied, “Above the ground.”

I laughed out loud at his comment. As I reached my truck, I was still thinking about his response, and my thoughts went to living in West Africa. I was reminded of the beliefs of the Mossi people of Burkina Faso. I worked as a missionary agriculturist among these people for seven and a half years. These people believed that only the physical part of the body dies when they take their last breath. That sounds OK to us western Christians, but that is where the similarities end.

The spirit side of the person drifts around them after death. To appease the wandering spirit, they make sacrifices for the departed that include food, local beer, money to buy things after death and clothes. Their afterlife is truly “above the ground.”

I participated in many burials while living in Burkina. Since it was always extremely hot, a body had to be buried the day of the death. If the grave could not be dug in time for the burial to be finished before sunset, superstitions demanded that they dig the grave at night and wait until sunrise for the body to be buried.

Men dug the grave while the women prepared the body for burial.

I never attended a village burial where a casket was used. This was in the Sahel—the zone connecting the Sahara Desert with the savannah, the more temperate zone that stretched across West Africa. So wood was in short supply, and wood for a casket had to be imported from neighboring Ghana. The villagers had no means to purchase such a luxury.

Villagers dug a round hole about 6 feet wide and about two feet deep, and in the middle of that hole they dug another hole. This “inner” hole was in the shape of a rectangle about thirty inches by eighteen inches and about 3-4 feet deep. Three or four men would get into the bigger hole, and they would place the feet of the body into the smaller hole. As they slowly released the body, it would slide into the slot. When the feet hit the bottom of the hole, the buttocks would also slide onto the bottom of the hole. The body was in a crouching position and the head would fall over on the knees. The result was that the body rested in the fetal position.

When I asked about this process, they would explain to me that a person came into the world from this fetal position, and when they reached their final earthly home, they were once again in the fetal position. I must admit that I really like this custom and wish that we practiced it. Of course, today the funeral directors would develop a casket that would be buried with the body in a fetal position while others would manufacture a vault in which to place the casket.

Today, we spend a lot of our time “above the ground” worrying when Jesus taught us not to worry. We make all kind of excuses about why we can’t spend more time with our family while understanding that God ordained our family and not our jobs or ministries or recreational activities. While walking on the topside of the soil, we spend most of our financial resources on ourselves and our family, while there are so many desperate needs of which we are aware.

And worst of all, while we await our time to leave our above the ground lives and enter eternity, we neglect sharing the best news that we will ever hear above the ground—the Good News of salvation for all who have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.