Wednesday, August
30, 2017
When I look at the night sky and see the work of your
fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are mere mortals that you
should think about them, human beings that you should care for them? Psalm 8:3-4(NLT)
Part of the
big stuff about which
everyone wonders is death. When I was in
my early twenties I worked for an insurance company. My boss, who was in his fifties, tried to
teach me that everyone,
not just a few people, or most people, but every single one of us, when we get past age forty or
so, thinks about death at least once a day. Now, trying to get a twenty-something to
understand that is like trying to get a Bassett hound interested in your stamp
collection. My boss was trying to teach
me this important fact because it was helpful to have as a motivating tool when
talking to people about buying life insurance. I had the facts about mortality, because my
boss would’ve fired me if I wouldn’t learn the numbers. But I didn’t believe it; I was twenty-three
and invincible. Nowadays, at 70, I know
my old boss was right.
Part of
wondering about the big stuff of our lives is what it will be like to pass off
this scene and into what comes next. It’s
truly mind-consuming to even consider!
About the
time I turned forty I was pastoring a church in Gainesville, Florida. We had a mostly young-to-middle aged congregation,
and, while I wasn’t exactly dominated night and day by thoughts of death, I
thought more often (and more seriously) about it than I did at twenty-three. I began to think my congregation ought to as
well! So I decided to preach one Sunday
on this text of Psalm 8. I called the
sermon This Preacher’s Funeral,
and the main points were:
1.
I am nothing (because I’m so small in a big universe).
2.
I am everything (because God made me just a little lower than
himself; I’m part of His crown of
creation), and
3.
I am God’s (because I gave back to Him all there is of
me, forever!).
Actually,
it’s a good sermon, and I still want whoever preaches my funeral to use
it. (If there’s still someone out there
who doesn’t know I’m a control freak, well, that cat has escaped the bag now!)
For a
visual aide on the sermon I decided to borrow a casket. My friend at the funeral home wouldn’t
deliver, so Mrs. Preacher and I had to lug it in our old grey horse of a
station wagon across town…well actually, through the middle of downtown Gainesville
on Homecoming Saturday when the Tennessee Volunteers had come to play our
Florida Gators. We made quite a scene
for the college crowd on the streets that day, two forty-somethings with a
casket sticking out of the back of our ’83 Ford Granada station wagon. (Cue the background music of Deliverance).
After I set
up the casket in the church I shared my grand plan with Elizabeth; designed for
maximum evangelistic effect, I would preach the sermon sitting in the casket! Mrs. Preacher looked at me with those eyes
that said everything without a word; it was something like: you
might do that married on Sunday morning, but I’ll be widowed by lunchtime. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t talking about
anybody else in the church doing the widow-making.
So…what’s
the point of my remembering one of my more foolish attempts to proclaim the
Gospel? It’s simple really – fear of the unknown can drive you to
weirdness! It’s true; if a
forty-plus person thinks about death, uncertainty can generate the kind of fear
that makes you think harder about why
you’re here, how you
got here, and where you’re
going. You think about mortality and
eternity. In short, mentally you put
yourself in that casket in the back of my Ford wagon, and you imagine where you’re
going to wind up once we get through town with all those surprised college
students waving and cheering!
For You Today
You chew on
that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!
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