The Faith of Closing the Casket
As I watched the funeral director guiding my sister, brother-in-law, niece, and nephews to fold in the casket lining and close the casket, I remember having to suppress a slight feeling of panic. Closing the casket on my nephew meant that he couldn’t breathe anymore. I had to remind myself that what we were saying goodbye to was the mere shell of my nephew.
I felt the feeling again at the burial. We stayed and watched as they lowered his flower-covered casket into the ground. We backed up as they brought in machines to lower the cement lid of the burial vault. Then we saw a bulldozer rumble up and push the dirt into the grave and tamp the dirt down with its bucket. I kept imagining my nephew in there, completely covered.
Again, I had to remind myself that he was not there. But that takes faith. My memory could still see him lying there. My mothering instinct wanted to rescue him. But I had to believe that he was actually absent from his body.
He was not simply just absent from his body, however; he was and is present with the Lord. Paul told the Corinthians, “We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord” (2 Cor 5:6). He contrasts the state of the living with their desire in verse 8: “We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”
Why should we rather be away from the body? Why should we prefer being with the Lord? Paul explained this in the first five verses of 2 Corinthians 5. In our earthly bodies, this temporary “tent,” “we groan” (vv. 2,4). Even when the “tent that is our earthly home is destroyed” through death, believers are assured that “we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (v.1).
Believing these truths as you watch a loved one’s casket close and be covered in dirt takes faith. But our faith is founded in a faithful God. Thus, we can repress our panic. We can grieve with grace and joy. We can praise our God through our tears.
He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always of good courage. (2 Corinthians 5:5–6a)
Holly Huffstutler serves with her husband David, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Rockford, IL. She blogs with him here where this post first appeared. Holly is a homemaker, raising and schooling her four children.
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