To see a son help carry his mother’s casket out of the church is hard. To do so without hope would be harder. Instead, today Hope and I experienced: “hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast . . . ” We were sad, but not without hope.
There are reasons for this hope and arguments that could be made in favor of the rationality of the good news, but today was not a day for arguments. Today was a day to live the truth and not argue for the truth. As a school community, we discuss everything and challenge any idea in order to test our beliefs and come to truth.
We also try to live out the truth we find. Living out the truth is, after all, why we look for the truth! Jesus is alive and so our friend is alive is the truth and that mattered very much today. Our little community takes joy when a baby is born, but we also feel sorrow when one of us moves from here to There. Still what we know about There is so great and good that we feel no despair.
Today we lived in hope and prayed for faith by means of the love of God and that was enough for this day. Tomorrow our community will continue to mourn, but also gather together to educate the children of this wonderful woman . . . this believer . . .this present saint in God.
And so it goes, we do the best we can, but we sometimes forget that we live in God and in our tiny tasks. Both Hope and I realized how small our problems (taxes, car troubles, tiredness) were compared to the reality of life and death.
God is life and being flows out of God’s nature like light flows from the Sun. Today was a day to bask in that light and lay our burdens down. School can think, challenge, but it can also build, plant, grow, and nourish. This was a day for nourishment where our school needed to be, and was, more like a garden in the life giving sun than a Socratic agora. Other days will come, but today we were nourished by truth, goodness, and beauty.
Her growth here is completed and now she grows in grace forever. When a Christian says: “Glory to God in all things.” she is not saying a sad thing, a self-denigrating thing, she is saying the truth. She is basking in light and glorying in truth. She is living a deeper reality.
We can do everything in a manner that gives glory to God and we saw that this very good woman was able to give glory to God, to the source of light, life, and love, even in dying. There is no pretense in this: dying is hard and real. There is goodness in the reality that says: “Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done.” This is passing through death to life, through sorrow to endless joy.
Here are the last words of this good woman in her funeral order of service:
I am now beginning to understand it.
In this life, all that matters
Is what brings God glory,
Read that again Sisters and Brothers.
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