Psalm 116:4-7
I prayed and said, "LORD, please don't let me die!" You are kind, LORD, so good and merciful. You protect ordinary people, and when I was helpless, you saved me and treated me so kindly that I don't need to worry anymore.
Scripture taken from the Contemporary English Version © 1991,1992, 1995 by American Bible Society, Used by Permission.
This week we said goodbye to Louise Hall, a woman my family knew as “Aunt Louise.” She wasn’t really our aunt, but in the words of another friend who grew up alongside us in this community, “she was our ‘Aunt Louise’, too.” Aunt Louise recently celebrated her 90th birthday, only to be hospitalized a few days later… one of her many trips to the hospital in recent years for various ailments and injuries. At her funeral, the pastor spoke of the devotion Aunt Louise had for family and friends… for church members and her community at large.
Louise Hall never married. When her sister suddenly lost her husband – while pregnant and already rearing three small children – Louise and her parents took them in and helped care for the family. When her own mother became ill and frail, Louise took early retirement to care for her. And when her sister developed Alzheimer’s, Louise helped her sister’s children care for her, too.
In between, she managed a 30-year career, taught small children in Sunday School for 25 years, sang in the church choir, and served on numerous church committees… including a stint in her later years on the Condolence Committee, which organized meals for grieving families. And always, Louise helped her own family with whatever they needed. Over and again, the pastor mentioned how Louise was fair and treated everyone so kindly. And she did.
Aunt Louise would have told you she was just an ordinary person doing what God had called her to do. And if we look at this passage in the Psalms and think about how good, fair, merciful, and comforting God is to us, we see that Aunt Louise understood what so many of us do not. She “got it” that we are to do these very things if we want to share the love of God with others. We are to strive to be like Him as much as humanly possible. We will never attain perfection, but the goal is to honor God… not to be perfect… and we must never stop trying to do more.
One more thing… this passage asks God to protect us from death. But I don’t think the Psalmist necessarily meant physical death. Because you see, in death, Aunt Louise and countless other faithful Christians have realized the ultimate reward… a home at the feet of Jesus. Instead, I think the “death” we must ask God to save us from is a sinful life… the emptiness of living without Him… and a “Christian” life that is devoid of service, honor and treating others fairly and mercifully.
The pastor said that preachers do not preach funerals… that people “preach” their own funeral by the way they live their lives… and Aunt Louise “preached a dandy!” What about you? If God called you to heaven tomorrow, would others speak of you as someone who was fair and merciful… always treating others equally and with love and kindness? What sort of funeral would your life preach?
Most of us still have work to do to “polish the edges” of our life sermon. And some of us still need to ask God to save us from the “death” of a life without Him. What sort of work do you still need to do? Where could you use a little “spit and polish” and the mighty hand of God? Isn’t it time you got busy asking Him to help you get on track? When God calls your name and invites you to step into heaven, will your funeral “preach” like Aunt Louise’s? Shouldn’t it?
©2011 Debbie Robus
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