One of the indicators that the years are passing by is that you attend more funerals than you do weddings. I\u2019ve attended my share of weddings, performed a few of them, and now the funeral count is catching up. I attended another funeral last week. If funerals must be attended (I only know of one way to avoid it and I\u2019m not ready for my own funeral yet) I\u2019d rather attend funerals of Christians than funerals of non-believers. I\u2019ve been to both. While both involve grief, Christians do not grieve as, \u201cothers who have no hope\u201d (1 Thes. 4:13). Certainly no less intense, Christian grief is different. It is mixed with hope. Both the music and the message of Christian funerals are hope-ful. Come to think of it what is the music of the non-Christian funeral? So in the midst of last week\u2019s funeral, of a faithful, long-time, servant of God, I received a new dose of hope. This memo then is not about death and funerals. It is about life \u2013 abundant and eternal \u2013 and the hope that is within us \u2013 hope for reunion and hope for reward. I\u2019m sure of it! Aren\u2019t you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the indicators that the years are passing by is that you attend more funerals than you do weddings. I\u2019ve attended my share of weddings, performed a few of them, and now the funeral count is catching up. I attended another funeral last week. If funerals must be attended (I only know of one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}