Christ has no body now on earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which He is to bless His people.
Daily Archives: April 1, 2016
Saint Francis’ prayer
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O, Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.
Death is nothing at all
(By Henry Scott Holland)
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.
Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect.
Without the trace of a shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolute unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you.
For an interval.
Somewhere. Very near.
Just around the corner.
All is well.
Nothing is past; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before only better, infinitely happier and forever we will all be one together with Christ.
Gone from my sight
“Gone from my Sight” by Henry Van Dyke
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then, someone at my side says, ‘There, she is gone’
Gone where?
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me – not in her.
And, just at the moment when someone says, ‘There, she is gone,’
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, ‘Here she comes!’
And that is dying…
Death comes in its own time, in its own way.
Death is as unique as the individual experiencing it.
God representative
Any person who is minister of any sort – priest, pastor, a chaplain or just a visitor from the church – needs to remember that they are a representative of Jesus to the person they are visiting. To people who are hurting and especially people who have been hurt or felt marginalized by the church, any person who represents themselves as being from a church represents Jesus himself to them – represents God to them.
This means that you have to make sure that how you act is impeccable. If you make an appointment to visit with someone don’t be late. If you are late, you are saying to them that their time and concerns don’t matter to God.
If a newcomer visits your church and leaves their name and address for you to contact them, then do it within the week – and do it personally. A form letter won’t cut it – especially if it is two weeks late. People like to think that they are noticed and special and important. Make the extra effort, because you’re not just you anymore but the person you serve.
Consider it as if you are driving a delivery vehicle for some company. On the back of the vehicle there’s a bumper sticker that says “How’s my driving? Please call” and it gives a 1-800 number and your tag number. When you represent God to people you’re not you anymore – you’re representing something much bigger than you and it’s important that you be as perfect as you can be.
Resurrection of the dead?
I think it is cruel to bring up the stories of Jesus raising people from the dead during a funeral service.
There are many of them:
A widow’s son restored to life (LK 7:11-17)
The synagogue leader Jairus’ daughter – (MT 918-19 and 23-26. Mark 5:21-23 and 35-43, LK 8:40-42 and 49-56)
The story of Lazarus (JN 11:38-40)
And of course we can’t forget Jesus’ own resurrection (MT 28:1-8, MK 16:1-8, LK 24:1-8.)
It is part and parcel of the Christian story to talk about everlasting life and the resurrection of the dead, especially at a funeral service. Many preachers use a funeral as a not-so-veiled attempt to push this message onto a captive audience, rather than comforting them in their grief.
Sometimes the message of eternal life just sounds like magical thinking.
Perhaps the hope in the resurrection, in the body itself being restored to life, is what drives the funeral industry to preserve human bodies by pumping them full of toxic chemicals and to put them in metal coffins and then put those into concrete vaults under six feet of dirt.
We must remember that Jesus is Jewish, and Jews don’t do any of this. The Jewish way of taking care of the deceased is to ensure that the body decays naturally and returns to the earth that it came from. In Israel, bodies aren’t even put into coffins. In America, there are different laws so at a minimum a plain pine casket is used, preferably with no vault. The idea is to make it as easy for the body to return to the earth by having as few barriers as possible. Often, Jews would buy land to have their own cemetery so they would not have to use vaults.
As for me, I would not want to be resurrected only to find that I was locked into a solid metal coffin, inside a concrete liner, six feet underground. This would be beyond cruel.
If God is going to resurrect us, then why are we going to all this effort to preserve the body? This is saying that we are responsible for the miracle – not God.
God made the first human from dirt, remember? God can restore us however we are to perfect form.
Also, think of this – say everyone who has ever died comes back to life. The Earth is going to be even more overcrowded than it is.
betsybeadhead 