Mama Lucas's Inurnment--We Have Hope!

The Lord blessed us with warm sunshine despite the cold this afternoon at the inurnment service of Mama Lucas. 

 (While working on Mama Lucas's obituary, the family learned that when an urn is buried, it is called inurnment instead of interment.) Esther had made this beautiful arrangement of evergreens, baby's breath, and crysanthemums of Mama's favorite color, lavendar.

As family and Jonathan's father's pastor gathered in, we were grateful for the sunshine which had not yet been hidden by the foothills in the distance.

Crystal got this snapshot of the urn between Jonathan and his father.

Bro. Steve Kearney had a very brief but challenging message--

"Let us commit ourselves afresh to being ready when it comes our time to die.

Because Mama Lucas was ready, by her own testimony, he said, we know she is in heaven.

Only a couple or so weeks before she died, a friend had written us, 

she had shared a victorious testimony at church.

After the committal, the Lord's prayer, and the singing of "When We All Get to Heaven" as Jonathan's dad had wished, we did a dove release, which I will post about in the next blog post, so as not to have too many pictures on one post.

After everyone else had left, Jonathan and I lingered a little, as we wanted to get a couple more snapshots from a different position, with the twilight in the background.

Then we started walking up over the hill to Jonathan's truck.

That's when a big pickup pulled up by us. It was an old friend that Jonathan used to work with, whom his work buddies had affectionately nickname "The Old Man."

He had no idea we'd be there, and apologized for interrupting us--which we assured him was not an interruption.

He had come to visit the grave of his wife, whom he had lost a few years ago.

He often comes, he said in tears, even though he knows she isn't there. 

He showed us around to possibly a dozen or more different gravestones of people we had known or been acquainted with, such as the daughter of Ward French.

It was a special ending to the afternoon, before heading off to be with Jonathan's immediate family and spouses for the evening.  

I hope our chance meeting was an uplift to him, even as it was a blessing to us to have an old friend to talk to and show us around. 

And of course, at this time of evening, deer visit the cemetery, looking for bits of grass to graze, or possibly the fresh flowers such as we brought today!

"Your flowers won't last long," our friend told us. "The deer will eat them!"

The grass withers; the flowers fade (or are eaten by deer), and our dusty bodies return to the dust from which they were made.

But the Word of God stands forever, and His promises tell us that Mama did not die, but rather went to sleep--to waken in the resurrection at the last day.