funerals

This is a week when I have to hit the ground running.

Two funerals on a Monday, with the first at 9.30am, mean -

1. I have to avoid sleeping in.

Not that I generally do, but some Sunday nights I'm that tired I feel I could sleep for a week, and, sod's law working the way it does, the one time I need to be up and on the go is the one time I'll be out for the count.

I set the alarm to be sure and was up and on the go good and early.

2. I don't have the time to do the preparation on the day of the funeral itself.

Sunday night, after three communion services, is not the best time to get such preparation done, so I'd had to do it well in advance at the end of last week. Which means -

3. I have to be careful to remember the relevant details.

There are three funeral services I have to conduct between today and tomorrow: and that means a huge amount of detail.

Details of the families. Details of their lives and occupations. Details of their interests and their hobbies. Details of the hymns the family wish and where they mean to go once the service is over.

I have to be careful to remember not only all the details, but which details belong with whom.

Friday, when I last went over the details, is a long way away from a Monday morning. And a torrent of details have flowed beneath the bridge of my mind and heart meantime. Getting the details right is easier said than done.

Talking the funerals through with the Lord at the start of the day is a good way of clearing my head and getting the details right. It's tempting to skip the time of prayer, what with the pressure of time and all. But counter-productive.

I live by faith. Which means looking to the Lord. And trusting the Lord.

I make sure that I have such time with the Lord at the start of the day.

The funerals both went well. There weren't large numbers at either. Mainly just the families, and a scattering of a few close friends.

But the Lord was there. And numbers are incidental. He's the only one whose presence I am counting on. He's the one alone who'll bring much comfort and much help to those who're there.

He was there indeed. And he did what no one even starts to do as well as he always does.

There was real comfort and an unexpected peace for those who were grieving.

The husband whose wife had so recently died remarked at the end of the 9.30 service that I might even see him at worship.

Yes, I know folk often speak along those lines. I was hardly born yesterday!

But the fact that he said it, itself is in some ways a really remarkable thing. This from a man who is 'not religious at all'. He and his wife would not have shared in a service of worship, I'd guess for decades.

And a good number of them at that.

It's the little things that struck him, I think. And his family.

The way I'd remembered all the details of his dear wife's life. A woman whom I'd never met, but strangely seemed to know. A sort of pleasantly 'spooky' feeling for the man - like there is in fact a God who knows us in the smallest little details of our lives.

At the end of the second service later on, a man came up and thanked me for the way in which I'd managed to weave together the story of this person's life with the thrust of Holy Scripture.

I think that took him a bit by surprise. Like it was usually one or the other. A stress on the Scriptures: or a stress on the life of a person.

And perhaps not so much 'spooky', as 'scary' and striking that the Scriptures of God impinge so entirely on each of our lives here and now. Like there's a God who actually takes to do with us.

Bit by bit the message begins to get home to folk when you're with them long enough in the community. Days and times like this serve to help people start to see just a little bit more clearly what the good news of Jesus is really all about.

The music of the 'harpist' (check out the previous post) is enthralling as they stop to listen long enough to hear.

And that despite a mobile phone going off repeatedly as I spoke!

I smiled within. That sort of thing doesn't really put me off at all. I've long since learned to live with all manner of tougher distractions.

But I smiled because I was speaking of how so much that was good in village life has been lost in the gradual urbanisation of our modern life.

And I thought as the phone went off - like the way in which we were neither interrupted by, nor ever so dependent on, these mobile phones.

We live too fast. And sometimes the very speed of modern life prevents us all from hearing what the harpist with his music is addressing to our hearts.

Funeral services are sometimes just the one chance that he gets to play the music of eternity before a listening crowd.

And there's all the world of difference between the rich and haunting music of the harpist as he plays, and the shoddy, superficial little ditties of the mobile phone.

And the messages brought are whole worlds different too.