the craft of engraving

Funerals take a fair amount of time and preparation. And today's been largely filled with just that sort of work. The service itself in the afternoon and the lengthy preparation through the morning.

I sometimes think they're rather like a tombstone that's erected at the close of someone's life: a final and a permanent reminder of the life the person lived.

As such, it's always crucial that I get it right!

The service of thanksgiving has a certain basic form: it can be varied, of course, to some extent, but the thing that really matters is the content. It's what goes on the tombstone as the clear, enduring epitaph - it's that which really counts.

And that's which takes the time and constitutes the work; the 'chiselling' out, with words my only instrument, the chiselling out of that which is the essence of the person's life.

Those guys at the golf 'majors', whose job is to get the engraving done before the silver trophy is presented to the winner at the end - those guys have my huge admiration. They have to get it right (it would be easier for them, of course, if Tiger Woods was absolutely guaranteed to win!) and they have to do it fast. It's a permanent record.

Funerals are a bit like that. A kind of spiritual engraving that I'm called to do upon that strange collective memory of the person's kith and kin, which forms a lasting tombstone in their hearts.

It involves me in encapsulating well, in just those few brief moments that I have, the essence of the person's life: painting out a portrait from a palette full of countless little memories people have: and setting such a portrait in the context of eternity, whereby the Lord himself will speak and go on speaking to our hearts.

I have to try and turn these verbal tombstones into something like the 'tablets of the law' through which abiding truths are spoken from on high and pressed home to our hearts.

I have to get it right and I have to do it fast. At least it always feels like that!

The pressure of both is intense. And so I like to set aside as much time as I can - and mostly that means doing little else. I only ever get one shot at doing that verbal chiselling on the tombstone that the funeral service is.

So that was the bulk of the morning today. No-one else around the place, which meant there weren't diversions and ensured that I could do this next 'engraving' with the focus it required.

At the service itself this afternoon there were crowds and crowds of folk. Standing room only, albeit the chapel involved was the smaller one of the two. At the end of the service, as people filed out, a man I didn't recognise came up and shook my hand.

"I've known her now for over fifty years," he said: "and you got her to a T!"

How important that is! And reassuring, too.

I sometimes think the task involved is basically prophetic at heart. Discerning, then proclaiming, what is nothing less than God's own word about the person who has died. Not his judgment on the person's life: but his word.

A word which shows that God himself has known this person through and through and loved them all their days - and therefore, too, a word which will proclaim, to all assembled there, he knows and loves each one of us as well.

And so it's living stones as well I'm chiselling out: my words at such a time can have an impact on the hearts and lives of those who're still alive: my words can maybe help to shape the future course their lives will now adopt.

Engraving God's own truth on people's lives and helping write his story in their lives.

I called by on the couple later on, the couple who've been working through the booklet which we use for those who want to find out more of what it's all about, Coming Alive! - again we had a good and fruitful time, sitting round their table with a warming mug of coffee in our hands. (In fact I even used the mugs at one point to explain about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!).

I asked them what they wanted on their tombstones when they died. What they hoped their living would achieve.

They spoke about the way, above all else, they wanted to be known for how they'd brought their children up. So we chatted about that and they came to see that what they really wanted is the change and transformation that the Lord is all about: working in our lives the experience, the character and the massive sort of impact that is seen in Jesus Christ.

I said - you really want to change the world! Why stop with just your children when there are so many other people that you meet with day by day? The call that Jesus issues is ... well, at root the chance to join him as he brings about such change.

Sometimes, I fear, we've lost the plot and left folk far too passive in their faith in Jesus Christ. People want a cause for which to live and die, something that is big enough to merit that engraving on the tombstone that's erected at the closing of their life.

He helped to change the world. Something like that.

If I can give to people something of a vision for just what their lives can come to be in Christ, I guess that I'm engraving, even now, chiselling out a living, growing likeness to the Lord. Exciting!