My family and I attended a funeral this weekend for one of the saints from our church.  I knew him as a gifted builder who, along with his wife, was always genuinely happy to see you.  As far as funerals go, it was a good one.  (It helps tremendously to know that his hope was in Jesus.)  At one point a slideshow of  pictures from throughout his life was shown accompanied by Debussy's "Clair De Lune."  I have a childhood memory of my Daddy saying something along the lines of , "Great music tells the story, even if there are no lyrics."  That song is what the sweetness of the hope and peace that come from the knowledge of things unseen sounds like. While it played, I watched from the foyer, looking through the window that separated us from the sanctuary.  As I watched, my eye refocused and I began to notice the people who sat in a row beside me, reflected in the glass.  My attention rested on one of our deacons, an older man whose life is a story of hard work and trials that,honestly, I hope to be spared.  He is a widower of only a few months.  I watched his always stoic face and wondered what he must be thinking in a time like this.  My thought was interrupted by another figure who moved into the empty seat next to him.  She was another familiar face.  Although quite a bit younger than the deacon, she has been widowed for several years longer than he has.  She placed a hand on his arm, and I could read her lips asking him, "Are you okay?"  He turned, smiled warmly, and nodded.  And they just sat there together, remembering.

From there I looked down to where my wife sat next to me, holding our one year-old son.  He sat in her lap and reached over to the lady next to them.  She held out her hand and let him play with the bracelet on her wrist.  And he sat in quiet contentment, not yet understanding in his young mind what church is, but, I believe, understanding that it is a place where we regularly go together, where we are loved.  Only about two months ago I had asked this same lady where she had gotten her Bible cover, since my wife's was falling apart and she had long admired hers.  I had intended to go and get one for my wife for Christmas, but this lady went and beat me to it, and she even filled it with a new Bible.

The Church is a family.  Adoption into the Family is a beautiful and powerful gift from the Lord.  Even when one of our own dies, and we miss them, we can know that their lives and deaths are "precious in the sight of the Lord" (Psalm 116:15).  We can know that He does not want us "to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep," so that we "may not grieve, as do the rest who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13).  He has given us each other to help and comfort, "speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with [our hearts] to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to the God and Father; being subjected to one another in the fear of Christ" (Ephesians 5:19-21).