Last Sunday I announced that I would preach sermons on the subjects of Death! Heaven! HELL!
Church life can be a little slow in January so I figured that these largely unexplored subjects, at least in the United Church, would catch folks' attention.
I invited worshippers to fill out a brief questionnaire on death last week and almost seventy of them did. The questions invited mostly "yes" or "no" answers but lots of people wrote in comments. I'm told that a boy in the congregation was quite intrigued and filled one out. He wondered about staying in for the sermon this week rather than going to Sunday School.
Wouldn't you know that this week I have conducted two funerals in four days. It's the way it happens sometimes. Both people in their nineties. Both of them lived good, long lives and were much loved. Both of them had a resurrection faith.
It's not always easy to consider our mortality: think of Woody Allen's quip that he is not afraid of dying, he just doesn't want to be there when it happens. I just pray that God is there when "the roll is called up yonder" for me, and while I don't have a heavenly roadmap, Christ has shown the way.
Church life can be a little slow in January so I figured that these largely unexplored subjects, at least in the United Church, would catch folks' attention.
I invited worshippers to fill out a brief questionnaire on death last week and almost seventy of them did. The questions invited mostly "yes" or "no" answers but lots of people wrote in comments. I'm told that a boy in the congregation was quite intrigued and filled one out. He wondered about staying in for the sermon this week rather than going to Sunday School.
Wouldn't you know that this week I have conducted two funerals in four days. It's the way it happens sometimes. Both people in their nineties. Both of them lived good, long lives and were much loved. Both of them had a resurrection faith.
It's not always easy to consider our mortality: think of Woody Allen's quip that he is not afraid of dying, he just doesn't want to be there when it happens. I just pray that God is there when "the roll is called up yonder" for me, and while I don't have a heavenly roadmap, Christ has shown the way.
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