You learn more at a funeral than at a feast – After all, that’s where we’ll end up. We might discover something from it. [Ecclesiastes 7:2 (MSG)]
At my age, I’ve attended a fair share of funerals and they’ve run the gamut from full-blown productions complete with video presentations and choirs to a few mourners on a windy ski slope with a bag of ashes. Some ministers knew the deceased well and others couldn’t even pronounce the name correctly. There have been inspiring prayers and eulogies and some with no prayer at all. They’ve taken place in jam-packed churches and nearly empty mortuary chapels. Solomon was correct; there is a lot we can learn at funerals.
I’ve learned how much we miss when we don’t take the time to truly know someone. I discovered more about one woman from her obituary and eulogy than I did from 30 years of socializing with her. Her funeral showed me how little we really know about people we call “friends” and how superficial our friendships can be.
I’ve learned how empty some lives have been. When asked to do the eulogy for a distant family member, I was given a list of the five things of which he was most proud, the high point being a 4-H trophy awarded some seventy years earlier. He made no mention of family, friends, faith, or love. As I looked out over the mourners, there were no friends and only a few family members who attended out of a sense of obligation.
As we released butterflies following the joyous and love-filled celebration of life of another family member, I learned about courage and how much faith, love, family and friends can guide someone in life and through the dark valley of death.
I’ve learned how much a parent’s love and guidance can influence his children after hearing a son speak eloquently at his father’s funeral. I was reminded of how fragile life can be and, upon returning home, called every family member just to tell them I loved them.
I’ve learned that communities can come together with offerings of food, comfort and support and that families can be torn apart by resentment, jealousy, and greed. A funeral not only reminds us all of the inevitability of death, it can teach us how to live. If nothing else, we return home appreciating each day just a little more.
My mother disliked having her picture taken. She didn’t think of herself as attractive and she probably wasn’t pretty in the conventional way. Yet, even with a face covered by freckles, unruly hair, an overbite combined with a toothy smile, thick glasses and a hearing aid, she was the most beautiful woman I’ve known.
Earlier this year, upon seeing the browning and nearly naked cypress trees at the bird sanctuary, the visitor asked if Hurricane Irma had killed them. I explained that the bald and pond cypress weren’t dead, just dormant. Being deciduous, they shed their leaves annually and were just enjoying a much needed rest during the shorter days and dryer conditions of winter. I reassured her that, in a month or so, their bright green needles would return and new growth would sprout from their branches. Today, the forest is verdant throughout the swamp.
When Hurricane Irma uprooted trees here last September, the underground irrigation pipes throughout our 1,800 home community were wrenched out of the soil and the lines ruptured. Trees and stumps had to be removed before the process of finding and fixing the leaks could begin and we went more than seven months without irrigation. What with winter and spring’s hotter than average temperatures, receiving about half of our average rainfall since November, and no working irrigation system in our community, the once lush green grass became dry and brown, the flowers wilted, and the parched soil got hard. The only things that seemed to thrive were the weeds! Fortunately, the repairs were completed last week, the summer rain eventually will arrive, and our grass, shrubbery and trees will recover.
While talking with a friend, I mentioned how many people of our generation seem unprepared for the challenges of widowhood. Having relinquished certain responsibilities to their spouses during the decades of marriage, they’re ill-equipped when they lose that spouse. There are men who have no idea how to do laundry, grocery shop, clean the bathroom or use the microwave. On the other hand, many of my women friends have never done minor repairs, paid bills, made an investment or purchased a car. “That was me!” replied my friend whose husband died of cancer. His death, while unwelcome, was not unexpected so I asked why they hadn’t prepared her for widowhood. “He tried to,” she said, “but I wouldn’t listen.” As long as they didn’t talk about his imminent passing and her future life without him, she still could deny its reality.
The money changing and selling of animals that so angered Jesus took place in the Court of the Gentiles, but what was a Court of the Gentiles doing in the Jewish Temple? The explanation starts around 590 BC, when Nebuchadnezzar deported the Jews from Judah to Babylon (as happened to Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego). Although many Jews like Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah returned, a large Jewish population remained in Mesopotamia. The economic hardship and incessant warfare experienced by those who returned to Judah caused many to emigrate later. Jews eventually settled in Rome, Egypt, Macedonia, Greece, and the great cities of Asia Minor. Historians believe that, by the middle of the first century AD, there were more Jews living outside of Judah than in it.
Devotions of the Heart 