Death in Mid-life

This funeral sermon was preached for a forty-year-old member of my congregation; he died after an illness of six weeks, leaving a wife and two teenage daughters.

What do you do and where do you go when a loved one dies? Where do you go when you have a pain in your heart that no physician can cure? Where do you go when you feel like you've swallowed a stone? Where do you go when the heaviness of your grief is like a staggering load? Where do you go when tears run down like rain on your face? Who will care enough? Who can help? Who will understand, really understand your grief?

There is an old gospel song which asks the same question:

Life here is grand with friends I love so dear,Comfort I get from God's own Word;Yet when I face the chilling hand of death,Where could I go but …