https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/ready-set-done-7/

The daily post has given us this instruction today…

As it’s been a while since our last free-write… set a timer for ten minutes. Write without pause (and no edits!) until you’re out of time. Then, publish what you have (it’s your call whether or not to give the post a once-over).

To see how others have spent their ten minutes click on the link above.

Here is what I have been thinking today.

Christ Came To Us So That We Might Go To Him

As it is the Christmas season I am preparing, per usual, a funeral service. It seems that every year about this time I find myself doing at least one or two of these funeral events. I suppose it is all part and parcel of being a pastor, and I suppose some would find that really sad. I don’t. Well let me qualify that I don’t find it sad if the funeral I am doing is like the one I am putting together right now. The man who has gone on before us was a Christian man, Not a perfect man, not a man who had it all figured out but a Christian man. He was one of the men who understood that he had nothing to offer God in himself but that God had everything to offer him. And this man chose to take God up on His offer.

I suppose some might think Christmas is a terrible time to do a funeral (like it would be less terrible at some other time of the year…trust me for those left behind there is no good time for death to happen). I think there is another way to look at death at this particular holiday season, though. You see, one way to understand the incarnation of Christ is to see it as God paving the road from Heaven to Earth through the first advent, Christ’s birth. Death at this season then can be seen as a man or  a woman taking the very same road in the opposite direction. Before Christ there was no road into the presence of the Father. The way was shut and those who died had no direct access to the kingdom of Heaven. Today because of Christmas or because of Christ’s coming the way is open and this man this imperfect man who didn’t have it all together but who knew and trusted Jesus has now taken the long road Home! Today  that man is singing “Joy To The World” in a different place and while that is sad for those of us who miss him, I find it hard to begrudge him the Christmas gift he has waited for all these many years.