I had employed all of my well-learned, ministerial detachment along with a determination not to get emotional, but I still lost it during \u201cAmazing Grace.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The funeral soloist, obviously a good friend of the deceased, struggled through the first verse, eventually, chocking up to complete silence. It was at that point that many in the congregation began to sing along – \u201cI once was lost but now I\u2019m found, was blind but now I see.\u201d By the time we reached the final verse, \u201cWhen we\u2019ve been there ten thousand years . . .\u201d the overflow crowd was singing in unison, many standing, some with hands raised. I was singing, but with a choaked up voice, knowing that in approximately five minutes, I was to speak words of remembrance over my long-time friend. If there is ever a time, when we all need to sing together, it is at a time when human grief is mixed with spiritual celebration. After all, while we believers grieve, we do not \u201cgrieve like people who have no hope\u201d (1 Thessalonians 4:13, NLT).\u00a0\u00a0Wanna Dean Lloyd, you would have been so proud.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dr. Dan R. Crawford, Senior Professor, Chair of Prayer Emeritus; Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas. Former Head of Task Force for the Teaching of Prayer in Theological Education for America\u2019s National Prayer Committee.\u00a0 Administrative Consultant for the Valley Baptist Missions Education Center.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had employed all of my well-learned, ministerial detachment along with a determination not to get emotional, but I still lost it during \u201cAmazing Grace.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The funeral soloist, obviously a good friend of the deceased, struggled through the first verse, eventually, chocking up to complete silence. It was at that point that many in the congregation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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-3226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3226","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=3226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3227,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3226\/revisions\/3227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}