Sooner Than You Think
John 20:1-18
Illustration
by Ray Pritchard

Ray Pritchard, president of Keep Believing Ministries, shared the emotions he felt at his mother's funeral:

My mother died three years ago. I had the honor of speaking at her graveside service where we buried her next to my father. While I was standing there, I had a surreal personal experience. Perhaps it happened partly because I was a bit under the weather, perhaps it was seeing so many old friends after three decades, perhaps it was because we were burying my mother and my father side by side. It was as if there was a "wrinkle in time" and the 29 years since my father died had suddenly been swallowed up. They just disappeared for a moment. I was in my early 20s when Dad died; I'm in my early 50s now. Most of the family friends who came to the graveside service had been at my father's funeral 29 years earlier. Most of them were in their early 50s then; most are in their late 70s or early 80s now. It seemed as if the three decades in between had just disappeared. All this passed through my mind in a flash while I was speaking. I could reach out and touch my mother's coffin. I was standing three feet from where we buried my father. It was as if we buried my father last week, we were burying my mother this week, and next week someone would bury me. I had a tremendous sense of my own mortality, of the quickly passing years. It seemed as if the Lord whispered in my ear, "Ray, take a good look. This is where you will be someday." And that day will probably come sooner than I think.

ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc. , Christ and the Problem of Death, by Ray Pritchard