Funeral Bible Quotes

I want to read the employment section of the Bible. I think it’s simply called Job.

The next time believers tell you that 'separation of church and state' does not appear in our founding document, tell them to stop using the word 'trinity.' The word 'trinity' appears nowhere in the bible. Neither does Rapture, or Second Coming, or Original Sin. If they are still unfazed (or unphrased), by this, then add Omniscience, Omnipresence, Supernatural,Transcendence, Afterlife, Deity, Divinity, Theology, Monotheism, Missionary, Immaculate Conception, Christmas, Christianity, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Methodist, Catholic, Pope, Cardinal, Catechism, Purgatory, Penance, Transubstantiation, Excommunication, Dogma, Chastity, Unpardonable Sin, Infallibility, Inerrancy, Incarnation, Epiphany, Sermon, Eucharist, the Lord's Prayer, Good Friday, Doubting Thomas, Advent, Sunday School, Dead Sea, Golden Rule, Moral, Morality, Ethics, Patriotism, Education, Atheism, Apostasy, Conservative (Liberal is in), Capital Punishment, Monogamy, Abortion, Pornography, Homosexual, Lesbian, Fairness, Logic, Republic, Democracy, Capitalism, Funeral, Decalogue, or Bible.

No parent should have to bury a child ... No mother should have to bury a son. Mothers are not meant to bury sons. It is not in the natural order of things. I buried my son. In a potter's field. In a field of Blood. In empty, acrid silence. There was no funeral. There were no mourners. His friends all absent. His father dead. His sisters refusing to attend. I discovered his body alone, I dug his grave alone, I placed him in a hole, and covered him with dirt and rock alone. I was not able to finish burying him before sundown, and I'm not sure if that affected his fate ... I begrudge God none of this. I do not curse him or bemoan my lot. And though my heart keeps beating only to keep breaking--I do not question why. I remember the morning my son was born as if it was yesterday. The moment the midwife placed him in my arms, I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding. I remember holding my son, and looking over at my own mother and saying, "Now I understand why the sun comes up at day and the stars come out at night. I understand why rain falls gently. Now I understand you, Mother" ... I loved my son every day of his life, and I will love him ferociously long after I've stopped breathing. I am a simple woman. I am not bright or learn-ed. I do not read. I do not write. My opinions are not solicited. My voice is not important ... On the day of my son's birth I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding ... The world tells me that God is in Heaven and that my son is in Hell. I tell the world the one true thing I know: If my son is in Hell, then there is no Heaven--because if my son sits in Hell, there is no God.

Adolf Eichmann went to the gallows with great dignity. He had asked for a bottle of red wine and had drunk half of it. He refused the help of the Protestant minister the Reverend William Hull who offered to read the Bible with him: he had only two more hours to live and therefore no “time to waste.” He walked the fifty yards from his cell to the execution chamber calm and erect with his hands bound behind him. When the guards tied his ankles and knees he asked them to loosen the bonds so that he could stand straight. “I don’t need that ” he said when the black hood was offered him. He was in complete command of himself nay he was more: he was completely himself. Nothing could have demonstrated this more convincingly than the grotesque silliness of his last words. He began by stating emphatically that he was a Gottgläubiger to express in common Nazi fashion that he was no Christian and did not believe in life after death. He then proceeded: “After a short while gentlemen we shall all meet again. Such is the fate of all men. Long live Germany long live Argentina long live Austria. I shall not forget them.” In the face of death he had found the cliché used in funeral oratory. Under the gallows his memory played him the last trick he was “elated” and he forgot that this was his own funeral. It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us-the lesson of the fearsome word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.

The Bible is not a book of principles to live by but rather a Person to live for.

You are despicable and such cowards that you won't even share your dead bodies with the Earth, but put them inside wooden and metal coffins to "protect" them. From what?

Did Gran go to a gynecologist? That is totally weird. I never thought about my grandmother's vagina before. I don't want to be thinking about my grandmother's vagina. Not here, at her funeral. In a church. While i'm doing a reading from the Bible.

Isn’t that a message for us today? There is a refuge for every sinner in Christ. Regardless of how high a man’s IQ is or what his position in life might be, if he is outside the place of refuge, he is lost. If the truth were told at many funerals today, the preachers would have to say about the departed person, “A fool has just died. He would not turn to Jesus Christ who is the place of refuge.” Are you resting in Christ?

I think perhaps Liza accepted the world as she accepted the Bible, with all of its paradoxes and its reverses. She did not like death but she knew it existed, and when it came it did not surprise her. Samuel may have thought and played and philosophized about death, hut he did not really believe in it. His world did not have death as a member. He, and all around him, was immortal. When real death came it was an outrage, a denial of the immortality he deeply felt, and the one crack in his wall caused the whole structure to crash. I think he had always thought he could argue himself out of death. It was a personal opponent and one he could lick. To Liza it was simply death—the thing promised and expected. She could go on and in her sorrow put a pot of beans in the oven, bake six pies, and plan to exactness how much food would be necessary properly to feed the funeral guests. And she could in her sorrow see that Samuel had a clean white shirt and that his black broadcloth was brushed and free of spots and his shoes blacked. Perhaps it takes these two kinds to make a good marriage, riveted with several kinds of strengths.

They went through all that shit to raise you, and now you're sad so you jump off a fucking bridge. If my kid did that, I'd be pissed. What a fucking moron! I wouldn't even give him a funeral.

she read a couple of passages from the Bible, which I know is the done thing. I’ve been to many funerals now, and an awful lot of people have walked through the valley of the shadow of death.

Eddie looked again at the graveside gathering. He wondered if he'd had a funeral. He wondered if anyone came. He saw the priest reading from the bible and the mourners lowering their heads. This was the day the Blue Man had been buried, all those years ago. Eddie had been there, a little boy, fidgeting through the ceremony, with no idea of the role he'd played in it. "I still don't understand," Eddie whispered. "What good came from your death?" "You lived," the Blue Man answered. "But we barely knew each other. I might as well have been a stranger." The Blue Man put his arms on Eddie's shoulders. Eddie felt that warm, melting sensation. "Strangers," the Blue Man said, "are just family you have yet to come to know.

No more peeping through keyholes! No more mas turbating in the dark! No more public confessions! Unscrew the doors from their jambs! I want a world where the vagina is represented by a crude, honest slit, a world that has feeling for bone and contour, for raw, primary colors, a world that has fear and respect for its animal origins. I’m sick of looking at cunts all tickled up, disguised, deformed, idealized. Cunts with nerve ends exposed. I don’t want to watch young virgins masturbating in the privacy of their boudoirs or biting their nails or tearing their hair or lying on a bed full of bread crumbs for a whole chapter. I want Madagascan funeral poles, with animal upon animal and at the top Adam and Eve, and Eve with a crude, honest slit between the legs. I want hermaphrodites who are real hermaphrodites, and not make-believes walking around with an atrophied penis or a dried-up cunt. I want a classic purity, where dung is dung and angels are angels. The Bible a la King James, for example. Not the Bible of Wycliffe, not the Vulgate, not the Greek, not the Hebrew, but the glorious, death-dealing Bible that was created when the English language was in flower, when a vocabulary of twenty thousand words sufficed to build a monument for all time. A Bible written in Svenska or Tegalic, a Bible for the Hottentots or the Chinese, a Bible that has to meander through the trickling sands of French is no Bible-it is a counterfeit and a fraud. The King James Version was created by a race of bone-crushers. It revives the primitive mysteries, revives rape, murder, incest, revives epilepsy, sadism, megalomania, revives demons, angels, dragons, leviathans, revives magic, exorcism, contagion, incantation, revives fratricide, regicide, patricide, suicide, revives hypnotism, anarchism, somnambulism, revives the song, the dance, the act, revives the mantic, the chthonian, the arcane, the mysterious, revives the power, the evil, and the glory that is God. All brought into the open on a colossal scale, and so salted and spiced that it will last until the next Ice Age. A classic purity, then-and to hell with the Post Office authorities! For what is it enables the classics to live at all, if indeed they be living on and not dying as we and all about us are dying? What preserves them against the ravages of time if it be not the salt that is in them? When I read Petronius or Apuleius or Rabelais, how close they seem! That salty tang! That odor of the menagerie! The smell of horse piss and lion’s dung, of tiger’s breath and elephant’s hide. Obscenity, lust, cruelty, boredom, wit. Real eunuchs. Real hermaphrodites. Real pricks. Real cunts. Real banquets! Rabelais rebuilds the walls of Paris with human cunts. Trimalchio tickles his own throat, pukes up his own guts, wallows in his own swill. In the amphitheater, where a big, sleepy pervert of a Caesar lolls dejectedly, the lions and the jackals, the hyenas, the tigers, the spotted leopards are crunching real human boneswhilst the coming men, the martyrs and imbeciles, are walking up the golden stairs shouting Hallelujah!

Yesterday, I went to see Gladwell, who is home for a few days. A terrible blow has struck them, his young sister, so full of life, with dark eyes and hair, had fallen from a horse at Blackheath; they found her unconscious and she died five hours later, without regaining consciousness. She was seventeen years old. As soon as I heard the news, I went to see them, knowing that Gladwell was home. I left at eleven o’clock; and had a long walk to Lewisham. I crossed London from one end to the other and didn’t arrive at my destination until almost five o’clock. They had all just come back from the funeral; the whole household was in mourning. I was happy to have come, but confused, truly upset by the spectacle of a pain so great and so venerable. “Blessed are they that mourn, blessed are they that sorrow, but always rejoice, blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Blessed are those that find love on their road, who are bound together by God, for to them all things will work together for their good.” I chatted for a long time, until evening, with Harry, about everything, the kingdom of God, the Bible; we chatted further, we walked up and down the station platform. Never will we forget the moments before we said goodbye.

Suffering seems to destroy so many things that give life meaning that it may feel impossible to even go on. In the last weeks of his life, my father faced a great range of life-ending, painful illnesses all at once. He had congestive heart failure and three kinds of cancer, even as he was dealing with a gall bladder attack, emphysema, and acute sciatica. At one time he said to a friend, "What's the point?" He was too sick to do the things that made his life meaningful- so why go on? At my father's funeral, his friend related to us how he gently reminded my father of some basic themes in the Bible. If God had kept him in this world, then there were still some things for him to do for those around him. Jesus was patient under even greater suffering for us, so we can be patient under lesser suffering for him. and heaven will make amends for everything.

The essence of masculinity is taking responsibility for yourself, then a wife, then children. These are the kinds of things the Bible says qualify a man to be a church leader.[198] Guys who don’t do this act irresponsibly, take rather than give, and dump their responsibilities on others by virtue of their childish ways. This is why Jeremiah wrote, “It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.”[199] Men are like trucks: they drive straighter when carrying a load.

«I’ve never been to a funeral until today. I see dazzling arrangements of red, yellow, and purple flowers with long, green stems. I see a stained-glass window with a white dove, a yellow sun, a blue sky. I see a gold cross, standing tall, shiny, brilliant. And I see black. Black dresses. Black pants. Black shoes. Black bibles. Black is my favorite color. Jackson asked me about it one time. “Ava, why don’t you like pink? Or yellow? Or blue?” ”I love black,” I said. ”It suits me.” ”I suit you,” he said. I’m not so sure I love black anymore. And then, beyond the flowers, beneath the stained-glass window, beside the cross, I see the white casket. I see red, burning love disappear forever. As we pull away, my eyes stay glued to the casket. It’s proof that sometimes life does not go on. I look around. If tears could bring him back, there’d be enough to bring him back a hundred times. That’s not what I’m thinking. I’m thinking, I hate good-byes. It’s like I was a garden salad with a light vinaigrette, and Jackson was a platter of seafood Cajun pasta. Alone, we were good. Together, we were fantastic. Memories might keep him alive. But they might kill me.»

Poem for My Father You closed the door. I was on the other side, screaming. It was black in your mind. Blacker than burned-out fire. Blacker than poison. Outside everything looked the same. You looked the same. You walked in your body like a living man. But you were not. would you not speak to me for weeks would you hang your coat in the closet without saying hello would you find a shoe out of place and beat me would you come home late would i lose the key would you find my glasses in the garbage would you put me on your knee would you read the bible to me in your smoking jacket after your mother died would you come home drunk and snore would you beat me on the legs would you carry me up the stairs by my hair so that my feet never touch the bottom would you make everything worse to make everything better i believe in god, the father almighty, the maker of heaven, the maker of my heaven and my hell. would you beat my mother would you beat her till she cries like a rabbit would you beat her in a corner of the kitchen while i am in the bathroom trying to bury my head underwater would you carry her to the bed would you put cotton and alcohol on her swollen head would you make love to her hair would you caress her hair would you rub her breasts with ben gay until she stinks would you sleep in the other room in the bed next to me while she sleeps on the pull-out cot would you come on the sheet while i am sleeping. later i look for the spot would you go to embalming school with the last of my mother's money would i see your picture in the book with all the other black boys you were the handsomest would you make the dead look beautiful would the men at the elks club would the rich ladies at funerals would the ugly drunk winos on the street know ben pretty ben regular ben would your father leave you when you were three with a mother who threw butcher knives at you would he leave you with her screaming red hair would he leave you to be smothered by a pillow she put over your head would he send for you during the summer like a rich uncle would you come in pretty corduroys until you were nine and never heard from him again would you hate him would you hate him every time you dragged hundred pound cartons of soap down the stairs into white ladies' basements would you hate him for fucking the woman who gave birth to you hate him flying by her house in the red truck so that other father threw down his hat in the street and stomped on it angry like we never saw him (bye bye to the will of grandpa bye bye to the family fortune bye bye when he stompled that hat, to the gold watch, embalmer's palace, grandbaby's college) mother crying silently, making floating island sending it up to the old man's ulcer would grandmother's diamonds close their heartsparks in the corner of the closet yellow like the eyes of cockroaches? Old man whose sperm swims in my veins, come back in love, come back in pain.

Church is important to most folks in the South. So the most important thing going is basically ruled by men as decreed by the Big Man himself. Not only that, but the church puts pressures on women that it does not put on men. Young women are expected to be chaste, moral, and pure, whereas young men are given way more leeway, ’cause, ya know, boys will be boys. Girls are expected to marry young and have kids, be a helpmate to their husbands (who are basically like having another child), and, of course, raise perfect little Christian babies to make this world a better place. So while it’s the preacher man who controls the church, it’s the women—those helpmates—who keep that shit going. They keep the pews tidy and wash the windows; type up the bulletins; volunteer for Sunday school, the nursery, youth group, and Vacation Bible School; fry the chicken for the postchurch dinners; organize the monthly potluck dinners, the spaghetti supper to raise money for a new roof, and the church fund drive; plant flowers in the front of the church, make food for sick parishioners, serve food after funerals, put together the Christmas pageant, get Easter lilies for Easter, wash the choir robes, organize the church trip, bake cookies for the bake sale to fund the church trip, pray unceasingly for their husband and their pastor and their kids and never complain, and then make sure their skirts are ironed for Sunday mornin’ service. All this while in most churches not being allowed to speak with any authority on the direction or doctrine of the church. No, no, ladies, the heavy lifting—thinkin’ up shit to say, standing up at the lectern telling people what to do, counting the money—that ain’t for yuns. So sorry.

It is the very ones who accuse the Bible of corruption who are the true corruptors. You will see that they took select portions of Scripture and after they twisted it and laced it with deadly cyanide, they concocted a whole new Bible that they call the Qur’an and claim it is the final Word of God. Like their god, the accuser, the corruptors accuse the virtuous of corruption, the murderers accuse the innocent of murder, the haters accuse the righteous of hate, the warmongers accuse the peaceful of war, the lovers of death accuse those who love life with cowardice, while cowards who promote instant death are given the title of the brave. Murderers are martyrs, their funerals are weddings, and their victims are criminals unworthy of even a funeral. Their heaven is debauchery and their earth is a hell devoid of even the most innocent music or wedding dance. Everything is turned upside down.

{The final resolutions at Robert Ingersoll's funeral, quoted here} Whereas, in the order of nature -- that nature which moves with unerring certainty in obedience to fixed laws -- Robert G. Ingersoll has gone to that repose which we call death. We, his old friends and fellow-citizens, who have shared his friendship in the past, hereby manifest the respect due his memory. At a time when everything impelled him to conceal his opinions or to withhold their expression, when the highest honors of the state were his if he would but avoid discussion of the questions that relate to futurity, he avowed his belief; he did not bow his knee to superstition nor countenance a creed which his intellect dissented. Casting aside all the things for which men most sigh -- political honor, the power to direct the futures of the state, riches and emoluments, the association of the worldly and the well- to-do -- he stood forth and expressed his honest doubts, and he welcomed the ostracism that came with it, as a crown of glory, no less than did the martyrs of old. Even this self-sacrifice has been accounted shame to him, saying that he was urged thereto by a desire for financial gain, when at the time he made his stand there was before him only the prospect of loss and the scorn of the public. We, therefore, who know what a struggle it was to cut loose from his old associations, and what it meant to him at that time, rejoice in his triumph and in the plaudits that came to him from thus boldly avowing his opinions, and we desire to record the fact that we feel that he was greater than a saint, greater than a mere hero -- he was a thoroughly honest man. He was a believer, not in the narrow creed of a past barbarous age, but a true believer in all that men ought to hold sacred, the sanctity of the home, the purity of friendship, and the honesty of the individual. He was not afraid to advocate the fact that eternal truth was eternal justice; he was not afraid of the truth, nor to avow that he owed allegiance to it first of all, and he was willing to suffer shame and condemnation for its sake. The laws of the universe were his bible; to do good, his religion, and he was true to his creed. We therefore commend his life, for he was the apostle of the fireside, the evangel of justice and love and charity and happiness. We who knew him when he first began his struggle, his old neighbors and friends, rejoice at the testimony he has left us, and we commend his life and efforts as worthy of emulation.

What does a mind that is focused on hope look like? I read recently about a woman who had been diagnosed with cancer and was given three months to live. Her doctor told her to make preparations to die, so she contacted her pastor and told him how she wanted things arranged for her funeral service—which songs she wanted to have sung, what Scriptures should be read, what words should be spoken—and that she wanted to be buried with her favorite Bible. But before he left, she called out to him, “One more thing.” “What?” “This is important. I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand.” The pastor did not know what to say. No one had ever made such a request before. So she explained. “In all my years going to church functions, whenever food was involved, my favorite part was when whoever was cleaning dishes of the main course would lean over and say, You can keep your fork. “It was my favorite part because I knew that it meant something great was coming. It wasn’t Jell-O. It was something with substance—cake or pie—biblical food. “So I just want people to see me there in my casket with a fork in my hand, and I want them to wonder, What’s with the fork? Then I want you to tell them, Something better is coming. Keep your fork.” The pastor hugged the woman good-bye. And soon after, she died. At the funeral service people saw the dress she had chosen, saw the Bible she loved, and heard the songs she loved, but they all asked the same question: “What’s with the fork?” The pastor explained that this woman, their friend, wanted them to know that for her—or for anyone who dies in Christ—this is not a day of defeat. It is a day of celebration. The real party is just starting. Something better is coming.

The Bible must not be read as a job description for motivated, self-disciplined, devoutly religious people to be their own heroes and saviors of their souls. It must be read as the story of guilty sinners and self-righteous hypocrites, visited by a perfect God

The main point of a prayer meeting is not to move God but to allow God to move us. The Bible says we Christians grieve, quench, and resist the Holy Spirit.[97] So, we pray to repent of our sin against him and align our will with his. The Spirit is always available to us, and in prayer we make ourselves available to him.

the Bible as God’s perfect and authoritative Word one God in three persons (Trinity) human sinfulness by nature and by choice Jesus as fully God and fully man who lived without sin, died in our place for our sins, and rose from the dead salvation bestowed by the grace of God when a sinner turns from sin and trusts in Jesus alone through faith new birth through the Holy Spirit eternal heaven for believers and eternal hell for unbelievers

We should pray that God would enrich his ordinance with his presence; that he would make the sacrament effectual to all those holy ends and purposes for which he hath appointed it; that it may be the feast of our graces, and the funeral of our corruptions; that it may not only be a sign to represent, but an instrument to convey, Christ to us, and a seal to assure us of our heavenly jointure [union].

It was her concern and commitment to a friend which last year involved her in perhaps the most emotional period of her life. For five months she secretly helped to care for Adrian Ward-Jackson who had discovered that he was suffering from AIDS. It was a time of laughter, joy and much sorrow as Adrian, a prominent figure in the world of art, ballet and opera, gradually succumbed to his illness. A man of great charisma and energy, Adrian initially found it difficult to come to terms with his fate when in the mid-1980s he was diagnosed as HIV positive. His word as deputy chairman of the Aids Crisis Trust, where he first met the Princess, had made him fully aware of the reality of the disease. Finally he broke the news in 1987 to his great friend Angela Serota, a dancer with the Royal Ballet until a leg injury cut short her career and now prominent in promoting dance and ballet. For much of the time, Angela, a woman of serenity and calm practicality, nursed Adrian, always with the support of her two teenage daughters. He was well enough to receive a CBE at Buckingham Palace in March 1991 for his work in the arts--he was a governor of the Royal Ballet, chairman of the Contemporary Arts Society and a director of the Theatre Museum Association--and it was at a celebratory lunch held at the Tate Gallery that Angela first met the Princess. In April 1991 Adrian’s condition deteriorated and he was confined to his Mayfair apartment where Angela was in almost constant attendance. It was from that time that Diana made regular visits, once even brining her children Princes Willian and Harry. From that time Angela and the Princess began to forge a supportive bond as they cared for their friend. Angela recalls: “I thought she was utterly beautiful in a very profound way. She has an inner spirit which shines forth though there was also a sense of pervasive unhappiness about her. I remember loving the way she never wanted me to be formal.” When Diana brought the boys to see her friends, a reflection of her firmly held belief that her role as mother is to bring them up in a way that equips them for every aspect of life and death, Angela saw in William a boy much older and more sensitive than his years. She recalls: “He had a mature view of illness, a perspective which showed awareness of love and commitment.” At first Angela kept in the background, leaving Diana alone in Adrian’s room where they chatted about mutual friends and other aspects of life. Often she brought Angela, whom she calls “Dame A”, a gift of flowers or similar token. She recalls: “Adrian loved to hear about her day-to-day work and he loved too the social side of life. She made him laugh but there was always the perfect degree of understanding, care and solicitude. This is the point about her, she is not just a decorative figurehead who floats around on a cloud of perfume.” The mood in Mount Street was invariably joyous, that sense of happiness that understands about pain. As Angela says: “I don’t see death as sad or depressing. It was a great journey he was going on. The Princess was very much in tune with that spirit. She also loved coming for herself, it was an intense experience. At the same time Adrian was revitalized by the healing quality of her presence.” Angela read from a number of works by St. Francis of Assisi, Kahil Gibran and the Bible as well as giving Adrian frequent aromatherapy treatments. A high spot was a telephone call from Mother Teresa of Calcutta who also sent a medallion via Indian friends. At his funeral they passed Diana a letter from Mother Teresa saying how much she was looking forward to meeting her when she visited India. Unfortunately Mother Teresa was ill at that time so the Princess made a special journey to Rome where she was recuperating. Nonetheless that affectionate note meant a great deal to the Princess.

Christ makes clear that Christianity is not a path to more comforts, higher status, or greater ease in this world..Here are the days when holding fasting to the gospel, actually believing the Bible, and putting it into practice will mean risking your reputation, sacrificing your social status, disagreeing with your closest family and friends, jeopardizing your economic security and earthly stability, giving away your possessions, leaving behind the accolades of the world, and..potentially losing your life..it is not possible to love the poor and live in unabated luxury..authentic tolerance doesn't mask truth but magnifies it, showing us how to love and serve one another in view of our differences..we spend the majority of our time sitting as spectators in services that cater to our comforts. Even in our giving to the church, we spend the majority of our money on places for us to meet, professionals to do the ministry, and programs designed around us and our kids..Jesus' main point is not that going to a funeral is wrong, but that his Kingdom will not take second place to anyone or anything else..Even more important than honoring the dead was proclaiming the Kingdom to those who were dying..Jesus knew that as great as people's earthly needs were, their eternal need was far greater..the ultimate priority of his coming was not to relieve suffering..his ultimate priority in coming to the world was to sever the root of suffering: sin itself..He came not just to give the poor drinking water for their bodies but to give people living water for their souls. He came not just to give orphans and widows a family now but to give them a family forever. He came not just to free girls from slavery to sex but to free them from slavery to sin. He came not just to make equality possible on earth but to make eternity possible in heaven..If all we do is meet people's physical needs while ignoring their spiritual need, we miss the entire point..We testify with our lips what we attest with our lives..giving a cup of water to the poor is not contingent upon that person's confession of faith in Christ..it is in addressing eternal suffering that we are most effective in alleviating earthly suffering..This commission is not just a general command to make disciples among as many people as possible. Instead, it is a specific command to make disciples among every people group in the world..Jesus has not given us a commission to consider; he has given us a command to obey..it seems that Jesus knows as soon as this man returns to his family, the lure to stay will be strong..It is not uncommon for the lure of family love to lead to faithless living..Following Jesus doesn't just entail sacrificial abandonment of our lives; it requires supreme affection from our hearts..I can slowly let indecision become inaction..delayed obedience becomes disobedience..If I'm walking by a lake and see a child drowning, I don't stop and ponder what I should do. Nor do I just stand there praying about what action to take. I do something..My purpose in putting these realities before us is not to cause us to collapse under their weight. To be certain, God alone is able to bear these global burdens..proclaim the gospel not under a utopian illusion that you or I or anyone or everyone together can rid this world of pain and suffering. That responsibility belongs to the resurrected Christ.

THE PARENTS HAD been close in college but hadn’t gotten together as a group since then. Until they picked this season for their offensively long reunion. One had been heard to say: “Our last hurrah.” It sounded like bad acting in a stupid play. Another one non-joked, “After this, we’ll see each other next at someone’s funeral.” None of them cracked a smile.

This -- this religion of theirs -- was filthy; ugly, like the shiny black covers of their Bibles where their fingers left a grey, greasy smear. Filthy and frightful; like funerals. You might as well be buried alive, five coffins deep in a pit of yellow clay.

I was watching the news the other night, and they were still covering that story in Mumbai about the terrorists who went on a shooting rampage. The man on the news said that before the terrorists killed the Jews in the Jewish center, they tortured them. I had to turn off the television, because I could see the torture in my head the way they were describing it. I kept imagining these people, just living their daily lives, and then having them suddenly ended in unjust tragedy. When we watch the news, we grieve all of this, but when we go to the movies, we want more of it. Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in. We think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller. If you want to talk about positive and negative charges in a story, ultimately I think you’d break those charges down into life and death. The fact of life and the reality of death give the human story its dramatic tension. For whatever reason, we don’t celebrate coming into life much. I mean we send cards and women have baby showers and all that, but because the baby can’t really say thank you, we don’t make a big deal out of it. We make a big deal out of death, though. We sit around at funerals, feeling sorry for the unfortunate person whom death happened to. We say nice things about the person; we dig a hole and put the body in the hole and cover the casket with all our questions. I heard that a lot of playwrights used to end their stories with a funeral if it was a tragedy and a wedding if it was a comedy. I think that’s why we make such a big deal out of weddings, because a wedding means life, and because the bride and groom are old enough to write a thank-you note for the serving spoons you gave them. And perhaps because you get to drink and dance, no matter how old you are. I only dance at weddings. I practically only drink at weddings, too, mostly because that’s where I do my dancing. One of the things that gives me hope is that, even with all the tragedy that happens in the world, the Bible says that when we get to heaven, there will be a wedding and there will be drinking and there will be dancing.

There will be no funeral homes, no hospitals, no abortion clinics, no divorce courts, no brothels, no bankruptcy courts, no psychiatric wards, and no treatment centers. There will be no pornography, dial-a-porn, no teen suicide, no AIDS, no cancer, no talks shows, no rape, no missing children . . . no drug problems, no drive-by shootings, no racial tension, and no prejudice. There will be no misunderstandings, no injustice, no depression, no hurtful words, no gossip, no hurt feelings, no worry, no emptiness, and no child abuse. There will be no wars, no financial worries, no emotional heartaches, no physical pain, no spiritual flatness, no relational divisions, no murders, and no casseroles. There will be no tears, no suffering, no separations, no starvation, no arguments, no accidents, no emergency departments, no doctors, no nurses, no heart monitors, no rust, no perplexing questions, no false teachers, no financial shortages, no hurricanes, no bad habits, no decay, and no locks. We will never need to confess sin. Never need to apologize again. Never need to straighten out a strained relationship. Never have to resist Satan again. Never have to resist temptation. Never!

SB: I think this is the recognition that something profound has taken place. There has been a new birth of consciousness.   RG: A new birth of consciousness, yes, because human consciousness is born in violence, through violence.   SB: Thus Joseph can say, "You meant it for ill, but God meant it for good."[36]   RG: “God meant it for good.” So in other words, you have the two religions that are, in a way, signified by the story of Joseph. In the end what Joseph says is that shift, that shift which must be represented in the First Testament. That's why the First Testament is so powerful, because it constantly demonstrates that shift in its greatest stories. I think you said something very profound in the Joseph story, "You meant it for ill, but God turned it to good." In other words, all your violence leads you to a higher stage of humanity. So in a way that would also be one of the reasons why even if the Joseph story is a late story in terms of literary production, it is placed very early in the Bible, because it announces what the Bible is about.   SB: The other thing about these stories is that you'll notice they give hope because none of the people in the Bible are perfect. If they were perfect we couldn't identify with them.   RG: For certain they're all human, because you feel it in the Joseph story too, when they find Joseph dressed as the most important guy at the funeral. Their temptation must be to turn him into a god there, to see him as a god. Not only is he the viceroy, but he also has food, which they don't have. So he's like a transcendental Joseph, but since we’re in the Jewish world here they don't divinize their brother.   SB: No idols.   RG: No idols, that's right.   SB: This could not have been told in Greece. RG: This could not have been told in Greece. That's for sure.   SB:

Yo mama is so lazy… she undercooks Ramen noodles! Yo mama is so lazy… she don’t have dining table because she is always in bed! Yo mama is so lazy… she stuck her head out the window to let the wind blow her nose! Yo mama is so lazy… she was late to her “stay at home” job! Yo mama is so lazy… she thinks a two-income family is where the man has two jobs. Yo mama is so lazy… she arrived late at her own funeral. Yo mama is so lazy… she stole your identity to spend more time with you! Yo mama is so lazy… her to-do list says, “Nothing!” Yo mama is so lazy… she starved instead of getting up to get some food. Yo mama is so lazy… that she came in last place in a recent snail marathon. Yo mama is so lazy… she's got a remote control just to operate her remote control!

For one thing, the Bonhoeffers rarely went to church; for baptisms and funerals, they usually turned to Paula’s father or brother. The family was not anticlerical—indeed, the children loved to “play” at baptizing each other—but their Christianity was mostly of the homegrown variety. Daily life was filled with Bible reading and hymn singing, all of it led by Frau Bonhoeffer. Her reverence for the Scriptures was such that she read Bible stories to her children from the actual Bible text and not from a children’s retelling. Still, she sometimes used an illustrated Bible, explaining the pictures as she went.*

32. Laugh At Yourself Everyone always warms to people who can laugh at themselves. It’s human nature - and the best jokes are always against ourselves. It shows character, humility and grace. So don’t take yourself too seriously: if you fall in the mud, just sit up tall and laugh. Conversely, note how those who laugh at others are the people we instinctively pull away from. People who laugh at others are really showing that they think they’re better than the people they’re making fun of. And if they laugh at them, then we naturally think that maybe next time they will be laughing at us - behind our backs. And no one likes that. The ability to laugh at yourself also shows to others that you adhere to one of the great teachings of the Bible: Be humble, and consider others better than yourself. Great people make you feel great about yourself. They build others up, they pay compliments often and freely, and they don’t pull others down to push themselves up. So laugh at yourself, not others; build others up before yourself; and talk well, not nastily, about others in public. I love this idea: How you speak about others speaks loudest about yourself. It is so true (which is why there’s a whole chapter on it later in the book). It is one of my life goals that, at my funeral, those who know me will be able to stand up and say they never heard me speak badly of anyone else. (By the way, I have failed at this many times already, but it is still a good goal to have!) Like you, I am still a work in progress, but I am trying, like you, to do better. Every day a little kinder, a little more generous, and taking myself a little less seriously. Great men and women never take themselves seriously. It is part of what makes them great. Look at the animals: the strongest grizzly bear still rolls around with her cubs, goofing. It is part of their strength and magnetic appeal.

The gang of us sat around, and moved our thighs on the horsehair or on the split-bottom and stared down at the unpainted boards of the floor or at the design on the linoleum mat in the middle of the floor as though we were attending a funeral and owed the dead man some money. The linoleum mat was newish, and the colors were still bright—reds and tans and blues slick and varnished-looking—a kind of glib, impertinent, geometrical island floating there in the midst of the cornerless shadows and the acid mummy smell and the slow swell of Time which had fed into this room, day by day since long back, as into a landlocked sea where the fish were dead and the taste was brackish on your tongue. You had the feeling that if the Boss and Mr. Duffy and Sadie Burke and the photographer and the reporters and you and the rest got cuddled up together on that linoleum mat it would lift off the floor by magic and scoop you all up together and make a lazy preliminary circuit of the room and whisk right out the door or out the roof like the floating island of Gulliver or the carpet in the Arabian Nights and carry you off where you and it belonged and leave Old Man Stark sitting there as though nothing had happened, very clean and razor-nicked, with his gray hair plastered down damp, sitting there by the table where the big Bible and the lamp and the plush-bound album were under the blank, devouring gaze of the whiskered face in the big crayon portrait above the mantel shelf.