A Scriptural Sermon For A Person With Little Discernible Religious Belief

One thing I always try to do is make my funeral sermon fit the person whom I’ve come to bury. I’ve had people say to me, “I want you to do my funeral, but I’m not a religious person. I don’t want you to put me in heaven or make me into some kind of saint.”

I think that’s the way * would feel today.

To me, it’s a comfort to say, as the psalmist does, that God has been “our dwelling place in all generations.”

“The years of our life are threescore and ten, or even by reason of strength fourscore ...,” the psalmist says, underscoring the transience of life.

What comfort is there in the face of the fact that human beings fade and wither in the evening, and in the morning others flourish and are renewed?

There is the comfo…