(For those of you who missed our last episode, these are the roaming thoughts of a man at a funeral.)
QUOTES from: “Ten Shekels and a Shirt,” Paris Reidhead, (1919-1992) Sermon on Judges 17, c.1945-47
For a long time, I had thought about the missionary’s words, yet hadn’t thought of it again until now. I had decided that I guess everybody knows about heaven, but I didn’t know if I really wanted to go there either.
It’s not that I loved my sin… well, some of it… but heaven and hell didn’t seem real enough.
I didn’t really get the picture of Heaven and I could not bear to even imagine any vision of hell.
Then I thought about the corpse of my friend in the casket and had some comfort about the upcoming burial, instead of a cremation.
And something else that missionary had said captured my mind, as I once again stared out on the cross and took in the sad music.
* “Yes, will not the judge of all the earth do right? The heathen are lost and they are going to go to hell not because they haven’t heard the gospel.
*They are going to go to hell because they are sinners who love their sin and because they deserve hell… I didn’t send you to Africa for the sake of the heathen.”
*“I sent you to Africa for my sake. They deserved hell, but I love them…
And I endured the agonies of hell for them. I didn’t send you out there for them. I sent you out there for me.
Do I not deserve the reward of my sufferings? Don’t I deserve those for whom I died?”
—
I thought about “Amazing Grace.”
Hadn’t I heard that he was once captain of a slave ship?
“A wretch like me,” “a wretch like me,” kept ringing in my head.
I once was lost
But now am found
Was blind,
But now I see.
—