Today I will do something I rarely do although I am a minister. I am conducting a funeral for a friend. This friend is my age, 47, taken entirely too quickly. He leaves behind a wife, a son who is a senior in high school with my son, and a daughter just younger than my Hannah.
This is a hard day. In part this comes from the fact that I have lost a friend, and I grieve with the family. In part that stems from the burden I have for his children left behind so young. Perhaps the primary reason I struggle today grows out of a realization that I am confident in many things in ministry, but conducting funerals is not one of them.
It has been a long time since I was a pastor, when conducting funerals came with the territory. The only two funerals in which I have participated in the past fourteen years have been my mother-in-law’s and my grandmother’s.
If I were asked even at the last minute to speak to a gathering of college students or a great crowd of youth, I would greet that with excitement and enthusiasm. But I am not so comfortable at funerals. Will I be able to help the family with their grief? Will I do well both in the giving of honor to this man who has died and in challenging the hearers with the gospel? Will I be able to help in comforting the family? Will the crowd of youth there be helped to sort all this out, and yet be challenged to consider the brevity and fragility of life?
I am out of my comfort zone here. But I know the main reason is my limited experience in funerals. This is a humbling thing, to be reminded that all of us, no matter how much “expertise” some may think we have in a given arena, have areas of geniune frailty. There is a lesson here for those who struggle in areas of faith–tithing, witnessing, showing mercy, and so on. The more we do those things that honor God and encourage others, the more comfortable we become.
I want to be like my friend in many ways–he always smiled, and he encouraged others. And, he died the way he lived. My friend died in a hospital waiting for a lung transplant. Yet even in his death he gave, for he was an organ donor. This week my friend stepped from life here to life beyond, but before he left he gave life to three people due to his organ donation.
I want to die the way I live. I want to be pushed out of my comfort zones. I want to remember the brevity of life. I want to share the gospel boldly, and preach to young and old with conviction. I want to become better at helping people grieve. I want to be more compassionate. God keep pushing me to become more like Jesus.
I want to have the perspective of eternity. I want to remember the way Sarah Edwards responded when Jonathan, who had died of a smallpox vaccination at the age of 54. She penned a letter to her daughter, which read in part: “What shall I say? A holy and good God has covered us with a dark cloud. O that we may kiss the rod and lay our hands on our mouths! The Lord has done it. He has made me adore His goodness, that we had him so long. But my God lives; and He has my heart. O what a legacy my husband, and your father, has left us. We are all given to God; and there I am and love to be.”