Funeral - Dianna
Christopher B. Harbin
Psalm 84; Luke 12:4-6
We gather here to today for several reasons. We gather to bid farewell to a loved one who has passed from this life to the next. We gather to celebrate the life of Dianna. We gather to support Dianna's family and friends in this beginning phase of their grief in her passing. We gather to gain encouragement for ourselves in light of our own sense of mortality in the face of death. We gather to join our hearts with one another and seek to understand the imponderables of life with all its uncertainty.
Grief hits each of us differently. Each episode of grief is different, as there is always so much to process and we cannot do that all at once. We have each lost someone different in Dianna's passing. For some, she was mother. To others, she was grandmother, sister, aunt, great-aunt, mother-in-law, friend, cook, neighbor, church member, great-grandmother, confidant, a listening ear, a source of correction or encouragement. We will miss different aspects of who Dianna was in accord with our individual relationships with her, our memories, and the stories of our varied experiences with her. Life is complicated, and death in the context of our lives is no less so.
Death has always been difficult for us to process. From time immemorial, we have struggled to make sense of death even as we struggle to make sense of life. Faith calls us to seek answers in God, but we are not always comfortable with those answers. We struggle with faith, because while we want to trust God, it is difficult to set aside our druthers to embrace what God has for us.
The Psalmist declared his faith in God's care and protection for all of creation, from the sparrows to the people God called and chose to be emissaries of God's word and presence. He wrote of sparrows finding a place to build a nest in the midst of the Temple of Yahweh. He wrote of God's care for those same birds we might consider a nuisance. Jesus referred to t ...
Christopher B. Harbin
Psalm 84; Luke 12:4-6
We gather here to today for several reasons. We gather to bid farewell to a loved one who has passed from this life to the next. We gather to celebrate the life of Dianna. We gather to support Dianna's family and friends in this beginning phase of their grief in her passing. We gather to gain encouragement for ourselves in light of our own sense of mortality in the face of death. We gather to join our hearts with one another and seek to understand the imponderables of life with all its uncertainty.
Grief hits each of us differently. Each episode of grief is different, as there is always so much to process and we cannot do that all at once. We have each lost someone different in Dianna's passing. For some, she was mother. To others, she was grandmother, sister, aunt, great-aunt, mother-in-law, friend, cook, neighbor, church member, great-grandmother, confidant, a listening ear, a source of correction or encouragement. We will miss different aspects of who Dianna was in accord with our individual relationships with her, our memories, and the stories of our varied experiences with her. Life is complicated, and death in the context of our lives is no less so.
Death has always been difficult for us to process. From time immemorial, we have struggled to make sense of death even as we struggle to make sense of life. Faith calls us to seek answers in God, but we are not always comfortable with those answers. We struggle with faith, because while we want to trust God, it is difficult to set aside our druthers to embrace what God has for us.
The Psalmist declared his faith in God's care and protection for all of creation, from the sparrows to the people God called and chose to be emissaries of God's word and presence. He wrote of sparrows finding a place to build a nest in the midst of the Temple of Yahweh. He wrote of God's care for those same birds we might consider a nuisance. Jesus referred to t ...
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