New Warhorn Media post by Tim Bayly:
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I had to attend my grandfather’s funeral a few months ago. How grateful I would have been to have heard such words as these. Instead, I sat weeping while a Methodist minister promulgated some nonsense that we were attending a “celebration of life”, counter to Paul’s command in Romans 12:15. We “may not grieve as others do who have no hope”, but we do not reject grieving altogether. Nor ought we try to give ourselves some false comfort by struggling desperately to look the other way when God reminds us of the wages of sin that come even to good men.
2 It is better to go to the house of mourning
than to go to the house of feasting,
for this is the end of all mankind,
and the living will lay it to heart.
3 Sorrow is better than laughter,
for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.
4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
I know the history of my Particular Baptist forefathers, but I would prefer my own funeral to be a service according to the 1662 BCP than to inflict another such “celebration” upon the world.
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I’m very sorry for your loss. I’ve been to funerals like that too, and it is unbearable. God bless.
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Yes, so very sorry, dear brother. May God Himself comfort you. Love
I have put my wife under strict orders that if I predecease her that she is not to allow my funeral to turn into a “celebration of life.” Let my death proclaim the bad news of sin. And let the gospel burn brightly against that dark backdrop.
I’m sorry you lost your grandfather. May Christ bring His final victory over death soon.
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“But spare us, Lord most holy, o God moste mighty, o holy and mercifull saviour, thou moste worthy judge eternal, suffre us not at our last houre for any paines of death to fal from the.”
Given how Cranmer himself went to meet our Lord, this is almost prophetic.
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