Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Wondering About the Big Stuff - Part 3

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

Once the cheering stops, and the family leaves, and the workmen lower that casket…what then?
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!


[1] Title Image: Courtesy  Pixabay.com

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