'late'

People sometimes jokingly talk about a person being late for their own funeral.

It doesn't often happen in reality. But it did today.

There was a brief committal service at the crematorium before the service of thanksgiving we were holding back along here at the church.

Eleven o'clock we were due to start.

I was there. The family were there. A number of friends were also there.

But the hearse with the coffin was not to be seen at all. It had somehow got stuck in traffic. I can't think the family were all that pleased. It's hard enough when all goes well.

As we stood at the top of the steps and waited for the cortege to arrive, the organist turned and said to me that a funeral like this must take up really most of the day.

He was right. It does. And it did.

Seeing to all the little final preparations. Getting along (in time) to the local crematorium. The service there. Then back along for a fuller, longer service in the church. And then on to the buffet sort of meal they had thereafter at a place nearby. And walking back.

He was right. The bulk of the day is really given over to this single, special focus and this one important act. Drawing the line, in the presence of God, at the close of a person's life.

I've known the lady who died, of course - and all her family, too - for more than thirty years, I guess. So a day like today is really fairly personal. I mean, they always are. But it's the more so when you've known the folk for years.

It was a good day, though, and in many ways I'm glad there isn't time or opportunity for all that more. Such mourning is a thing that needs some space.

Space to meet with the Lord. And today there was a sense of that all right. A sense, I think, that every person there would've had. I hope so, anyway.

And a sense as well, I hope, that days like this afford us all the chance to re-assess our lives and get them back on track.

Often we're too busy to get down to things like that. And so we leave consideration of these big and weighty issues in relation to the Lord until it's far too late.

A bit like the hearse today. Is that why we often refer to the dead and deceased as 'the late' whatever their name may be?!

There are far too many people in our modern busy world who live their lives so fast they end up ultimately late.