We went to another funeral today, the memorial service actually….very different to the one we went to a couple of weeks ago. Unlike the first one, this was the funeral of man we had only known for a few months at the church we now go to. He had had cancer for a few months and the doctors had told him he couldn’t last past Christmas. As a result, he had organised a lot of the service himself, knowing that his time was short. He had not known the Lord all his life as some do, but had come to the realization of his need of salvation when in his forties.
His main passion in life until then was running marathon races, and he had put all his effort into this. But once he became a Christian, he felt that the Lord must come first, and his running took second place. But he never lost his love for running, and still did as much as he was able to right into older age.
As a result of this love of racing, he had excerpts of the film, Chariots of Fire, played during the service. These were the parts of the story where the main character, Eric Liddell, had been training for the marathon race in the Olympics back in the 1920s. When he found that the race was scheduled to be run on a Sunday, Eric said he would not run it, but changed to run a much longer marathon that he hadn’t trained for, on a weekday. No-one expected him to do well in this, but he committed it to the Lord and as a result won the race. After this time, he went to China to become a missionary there.
This was now the theme of this man’s life, and he wanted all present at his memorial service today to know this. Just as Eric Liddell honoured the Lord in his racing so this man did also to the best of his ability. He wasn’t able to go out as a missionary himself, but he took a great interest in missionary work, and supported those who did go.
It made me wonder what we each one would like to be said of us at our funeral services. Would we like our great deeds to be mentioned, with all the trophies we have won in our life, or would we count it greater to have said that we were faithful to our convictions. God does not expect us to be successful, but He does want us to be faithful to Him!