After the Funeral: The following thoughts come from a letter I wrote to a friend after returning home from a funeral yesterday afternoon.
It was my friend’s funeral today, and I have to admit, that was pretty tough. Thankfully, I sat in the back with one of his nephews and a couple of coworkers. I don’t even remember the last time I stepped inside a church building. As odd as it sounds, this was only the second funeral I have ever attended. The strange part is that the first one was in that exact same church, with that exact same minister. As I sit here writing, I just realized that the man whose funeral it was had also been related to this family. He was shot by a disgruntled employee at the meat packing plant where he worked and left behind six young children. The whole thing was heartbreaking. That funeral was unforgettable, and I suspect this one will be as well.
Home at last. I’m so thankful for this place. Sitting here after a funeral makes me appreciate it even more. I’ve often told my wife that the LORD has given us this place to care for, but not to possess in any ultimate sense. The older I get, the more I realize how true that is of everything. We spend much of our lives talking about what we own, yet in reality we are only temporary caretakers of gifts that came from God. Sitting here now, I’m reminded that a house becomes a little more than just a house when it has been the place where the Lord has blessed you over the years. In many ways, that’s true of everything we hold dear. Houses, possessions, careers, and even the friendships and relationships we cherish most are entrusted to us for a season. The gifts are real and precious, but they are all on loan from the ONE who gave them. Days like today have a way of bringing that truth into focus, reminding us how temporary this life is and how much we have to be thankful for while these gifts remain in our hands.
I should tell you that, for the first time in my life, I feel strangely disconnected from almost everything, especially anything associated with organized Christianity. If you removed the preaching, I would probably be there tomorrow. I would gladly sing the songs of Zion, enjoy fellowship with other believers, and gather around the things of Christ. But once the preaching starts, I often feel as though I have moved from hearing about Christ to hearing about myself- my walk, my growth, my effort, and the things I should be doing better. I’ve often thought to myself, I don’t need to pay anyone to tell me how to live. I know far more about my failures than I care to. What I need is someone to tell me about Christ, because the longer I live, the more persuaded I become that my greatest need has never been a better version of myself, but a greater understanding of Him.
At the funeral, I read my friend’s obituary, and the salvation reference there left me feeling a little heavy. I’m sure it was sincerely intended, and it probably reflects the way many people think, but listen to what it said about my friend: ‘…left us with a legacy of ready smiles and unwavering determination, a genuine hope because of his sincere faith and a love for his Lord and Savior as well as for his family.”
Now, I probably knew him as well as anyone on a gospel level, simply because that is what we spent much of our time talking about. As I sat there reading those words, I couldn’t help thinking that he would not have said it that way. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that nearly every word of hope in that statement was tied to something found in him. His faith. His sincerity. His love. His determination. Yet a sinner’s confidence before God does not ultimately rest in any of those things. It rests in Christ. Maybe that is what saddened me. If my friend could have written a final testimony, I suspect he would have spent far less time talking about himself and far more time talking about Christ. As soon as I got home, I told my wife, ‘I’m writing my own obituary,” and it’s going to be very short: Christ came into the world to save sinners, and I was one of them.
What direction am I headed? Honestly, I’m not entirely sure. At this point, I’m simply trying to take one step at a time, perhaps more cautiously than ever before. The older I get, the more aware I become of how much I don’t know and how easy it is to mistake confidence for understanding. Don’t worry, I’m not denying the faith. If anything, I find myself holding more tightly to Christ and more loosely to many of the things that have been built around Him. MPJ