Since many of our kinfolk are not Christian, the funerals that my wife and I have attended have varied widely in their approach to saying good-bye to the dear departed.

There have been funerals where the one officiating, minister or layman left us with a very positive assurance that our relative was now in heaven and all his trials were over, despite the fact that our relative had never expressed any interest during his lifetime in going to heaven.

Another preacher spoke of heaven as the place where we would awaken after death. He didn’t seem to believe there was any need to make any preparation or any decision that we wanted to go there, it would just be automatic.

There have been funerals where our relative’s favourite rock music was played and the celebrant told us the dear departed could now be found in the flowers and the breeze.

Another funeral was in a large neo-gothic church, stained glass windows, massive built in pipe organ, and all, and the minister had no god to pray to, he just recited a poem and called it a prayer. In his homily, he described eternal life as the memories we retained of the dear departed.

There have been unexpected blessings also. At the funeral of an aunt, who had probably never set foot in a church since her wedding day many years earlier, the minister read the obituary, stated he had never known our aunt and proceeded to preach a sermon on repentance.

At her son’s funeral many years later, there appeared to be only one person of any religious persuasion in the whole family. He was a Roman Catholic deacon and he conducted a service with well known hymns, scripture readings and a homily which would have been in place in an evangelical service.

Then there was a gathering in a cemetery to bury the ashes of a loved one who had died of a drug overdose. Nothing religious was mentioned beforehand and we expected nothing. But a minister was there who spoke for about two minutes. He read the first three verses of John 14, then told us that Jesus had gone to prepare a place for every one of us, but he was preparing a place for prepared people and it was up to each one of us to prepare for that place in heaven. Then he had a short prayer. The message was brief, but it was enough – much better than many long and elaborate services that promised a false hope, a beautiful package with nothing inside.

All these thoughts were prompted by the funeral we attended today in our home congregation. The service today did what a funeral should do – it brought friends and relatives together from near and far to show their support for the grieving family, it brought a finality to the earthly life of the departed sister as her casket was lowered into the ground, and it endeavoured to awaken in us a longing for heaven.