Funerals and Next Steps

It’s early 2005 and I have already participated in three funerals: two of them were connected to Clay House, where I provided pastoral care to the familes under the church banner and one for my neighbor, where I continue to provide informal care outside the formal church. Last Friday I led a graveside funeral overlooking a beautiful valley with bagpipes playing Amazing Grace in the distance.Afterward, I realized that God had a message for me in these recent happenings. The pain I’ve gone through in recent days has led to the death of a dream. Those of you who know me well, know that I have a heart-beat for the Mission of God in the urban centers of our world. As we see unprecedented numbers of people migrating to global cities, I believe now is the time for God’s people to live in cities, grafting ourselves into communities of the lost, and to be the church in every area of our lives. We are meant to rub shoulders with people of all races, classes, and walks of life. We are to love and serve our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. We are destined to influence for God wherever lost people live, especially in urban centers. So I have lived my life in pursuit of God’s Kingdom in one city, San Francisco, perhaps the Mount Everest of poverty in Christlikeness.As we came so close to leaving the city to return to our home church in Anaheim something in me began to die. It were as though I had to release that which I have held to so tightly in order to move forward. It feels like I have wrestled with God. And God was holding out for me to release that which He put in my heart…a dream. I realize now that I’m meant to hold more tightly to God, than to what He gives me. So I’m re-emerging from a season of emotions, tears, and pain with fresh outlook toward what today holds. I’m learning that death brings life, even when it doesn’t seem that way.