Christmas dinner

Sometimes a funeral effectively spans a whole day.

Not the service itself, you understand. I don't go on that long! I mean the whole long catalogue of tasks which gather round the 'main event' - the service of thanksgiving.

Today was like that. And not much else gets done.

Most of the morning involved some final preparations for the services there'd be.

A bit like a Christmas dinner, as it were. Though I don't want to get you all anxious by thinking of that! There's a lot of preparation for the meal. Turkeys take time to cook.

And so do funeral services. Hours and hours on end to get the whole thing right.

But all the preparation's always worth it if, for all who gather here to worship, there's a sense of God addressing us in person through his word.

Which I think there was today.

There was a large congregation, since Alex was hugely respected and widely known. And not an old man at all.

Size, of course, is irrelevant. God speaks when there's just a few. And the preparation that there always is is never either more or less dependent on the number of the people who'll be there. Jesus simply doesn't ever operate like that.

But the size of the crowd who were gathered today was as good an indication as you'd get of just how much an impact Alex had on countless different folk.

In a sense it's quite easy to honour the Lord when the man you're remembering so plainly had honoured the Lord himself through all of his days. His life had provided the script. Sort of.

When the person who's died is a Christian, and the people who gather the same, the spirit of worship is palpable, spine-tingling stuff. It makes you glad to be there. And it makes you all the more resolved within your heart to follow Christ that faithfully yourself.

At least, it does that for me!

With the number of folk who were present today, it took quite a time for them all to get out of the church. And then it was on to the cemetery up on the hill for a brief final act of committal.

And a bit like the grand old Duke of York, having marched them all up to the top of the hill, it was all the way back at the end. back to the halls for an afternoon cup of tea. And chat.

The chance for the chat is part of the day, part of what makes the occasion a memorable, heart-warming thing. And folk feel at home so they're happy to linger. Which is how we all like it to be.

But it means that the tidying up doesn't start 'til the day is well nigh done. And some of the ladies who've been working away in the kitchens, I'm sure, are pretty near done as well by then!

They're an amazing group of girls, I have to say. They see it as a ministry. Or a part of that extraordinary ministry of Christ in which we're all, in different ways, involved.

And, yes, it's all of that and maybe something more. Because the whole thing simply wouldn;t be the same without that something special which they bring. It's really just the nearest people sometimes get, I think, to sampling heaven's welcome in advance.

Something astonishing happens through days like this. In the face of death it's life which is always being given. All sorts of different people are touched and moved and maybe even just a bit transformed.

Something often happens in a person's heart and life through days like this.

It makes our days exciting and enthralling as we see the Lord at work.

It leaves us deeply humbled and amazed at what God does.

And, yes, I guess it also leaves us pretty near dead-beat as well!