An old friend of mine told me that her father, a lifelong pastor, used to say that as a preacher, funerals could be relatively simple to lead. All you have to do, he told her, is read Psalm 90, because at a funeral, every person in the sanctuary is listening.
It's been an awful week here. Five deaths have touched us significantly, even though none of the deceased were relatives or good friends. Three of those four deaths were not unexpected; two, awfully, were.
Our granddaughter, married just six months, lost a grandfather on her husband's side. She and her husband, just kids by my reckoning, have not had all that much experience with losses of that magnitude, so grandpa's dying is something somewhat new. She called my wife yesterday, something she hasn't done all that often, just to talk.
Another was the passing of the spouse of a man I know quite well, a man with similar interests, a man I've come to appreciate since moving out here to Alton. She was 90. Her death was not unexpected; she'd been failing. The two of them were childless, a fact I mention only because it seems her husband's grief may be more profound, his being so much alone.
The third, horrifically unexpected, can be attributed to weather. We've had a lot of snow, enough to keep roads treacherous. Ice, really, took the life of a young lady in an accident just a few miles north. She was returning for the second semester of her freshman year at Dordt University. Ten years ago, her father was killed in an accident; one can't help think of her mother's burdens today.
He would have been a senior in college if something horrible hadn't happened four years ago, some kind of brain tumor or cancer that slowly robbed him of most of what he once had. A death is a death, but this one might have been assessed as a blessing, an abatement to suffering. Still, the sheer extent of his suffering was immense.
And then, most unexpected, most unforgettable, that young man's mother was struck with a heart attack, in church, at her son's funeral--at her son's funeral. I don't know what can be said about that horrific end.
Those are death stories we've lived, none really immediate, but all of them consuming nonetheless.
That's why this Sunday's meditation is nothing more or less than Psalm 90.
Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.
So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Return, O Lord, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants. O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.
And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.
1 comment:
I read about the passing away of the mother on a Facebook post from a Dordt friend. I had to read it twice because I couldn’t believe what I was reading. So tragic.
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