Dan Czaplewski posted on March 22, 2007 13:40
I recently attended a funeral. I don’t get to just attend many funerals because I usually have responsibilities as a pastor to lead a funeral. In this case, I got to participate as one of the congregation.
This particular church was able to project photographs of the deceased on a screen prior to the service. As the worship began, the family was invited forward to pay their last respects at the casket. About 15 feet behind the casket was the screen showing pictures of better times. Each photograph, I am sure, had a happy story behind it. In that moment, the family couldn’t enjoy those pictures or those stories because they were consumed by their grief.
Yet, their loved one wasn’t the person laying in front of them. That beautiful woman was the person in those photographs: the lady with the big smile, holding babies, or posing for pictures on trips, or laughing with friends. Taking the whole sum of this woman’s life, the brief time of incapacitation over the past few weeks and the moment of here death were a mere aberration. That was not who she was.
It isn’t who she is either. Because we know that when we see Jesus, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is. (I John 3:2) I wish that I could say more about who this woman IS, but “no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things God has prepared for those who love him.” (I Corinthians 2:9)
As I left the funeral I know I had been comforted. It was good to remember the music that this woman loved and how she was loved by her family. But I also left with hope; hope not only for the saint of God who is now with Jesus, but with hope for myself that I will join them some day.
God bless you with a day of Christ’s own hope.