The Funeral

I went to a funeral today.

His name was James Lowell Curtis and he was 44 years old. He has two kids, Xander and Kaylie, both younger than mine, and a wife, Jackie. He had been a teacher, but was an administrator for HEB school district here in the Dallas/FW Metro when he died.

I didn’t know him very well. I think I had met him twice. Maybe. And that was only in Sunday School.

He died about a week ago. He went in for an MRI, had an allergic reaction to the dye he was injected with and his body basically shut down. I think he died within a week of the MRI.

When I heard that he died, I didn’t even know who he was. I kept thinking, ‘was he that guy that I talked to in SS?’ I had a picture of him in my head, but really had no idea if the guy that died was the same guy I saw in my head.

So, I went to the funeral on the off chance that it would be him. I knew that he was an uncle of a friend of mine, so I could at least say I was going to support her.

When I got to the church, the parking lot was packed. We’re talking Sunday morning packed. Everybody was sitting in the middle sections of the church, instead of spread out (like on a Sunday morn), and there must have been six hundred people there. One of the pastors said to my wife, Carla, that the only time he had seen that before was when a police officer died. For what it’s worth…

It was a beautiful funeral. (They called it a ‘celebration,’ but it was funeral. Changing the name doesn’t change what it is and doesn’t make it any more happy or sad. IMHO) The eulogies were incredible. He was obviously a great guy who loved his family, loved God, and had a tremendous impact on the people he interacted with. I hope that people can say half the nice things about me that they said about James.

James and I were, apparently, very similar (I’ll leave others to judge
the nice guy part). We are about the same age, same number of kids,
both teachers, have goofy senses of humor, love our kids, love our
wives. At some point, I did something I had never done before; I started thinking about my funeral.

I thought about the verses I would like read, the things I would like to have people say. I didn’t plan the music – it was more of a list of songs I DON’T want played, with ‘I Can Only Imagine’ at the top of the list. I love the song, but, come on, I haven’t been to a single funeral in the last four years that didn’t have that song featured. I thought about the people that I would like to have speak for me: David Schiff, Steve Basden, Athol Barnes – all friends from AIM.

In all of this hubristic thought, it occurred to me, I would love for someone to get saved at my funeral. That would make it all worth it. (Stay with me, here). I started to imagine throngs of people coming forward and giving their lives to Christ, all because of…something. I wasn’t quite sure what. Maybe my testimony, maybe because I died as a martyr, I don’t really know. I didn’t really think that far into it.

Then I thought, “if my life is God’s, my death is God’s also. I don’t get to pick the time, place or circumstances. If he wants to use my death for his purposes, so be it. If not, amen.” So much for throngs…

Anyway, the funeral continued and I began to look at the crowd. A couple of the people who spoke said that James would really love it if someone in the audience would give their lives to Jesus. It looked to me as if all the people in the audience already had done this. Of course, this isn’t true, but people who look like church people are NEVER going to get saved at church because everyone already thinks they’re Christians.

I keep looking at the previous paragraph, trying to figure out how to make it into some deep thought and it isn’t working. So, bottom line: I want a whole bunch of unsaved people to come to my funeral so that someone actually might get saved.

There’s only one teensy problem. I really don’t know any unsaved people. At least, not ones who would come to my funeral.

This is something God has been trying to tell me; I need to mix with people who are not church people. I think that, in order to do this, I’m going to have to make some radical changes in my life. What those changes are, I don’t know, but God will let me know soon enough.