Late Night Thoughts on Swimming

"Just keep swiming, just keep swimming, what do you do, you swim..." Oh, to have the simple focus of Dory!
I am in the middle of one of the hardest parish death experiences I have had to pastor, and I'm tired. The family prayer service is now done. The funeral is tomorrow. I know roughly where I want to go with the funeral sermon, but it is no where near done. But it is getting late, and I am tired, so tired.

So what shall I say to this family of a 24 year old man, life cut short in a senseless car accident? As I drove home from the prayer service, I turned into town and noticed about 20 trucks parked outside the two local bars. Now, I'm not against getting together with friends over a few brews, and it is Friday night, but all of a sudden, I got mad. Really ticked me off.

I raged to myself, "I'm going to bury a 24 year old whose life has been cut short, who should still be here, and you all are pissing away your life in the bottom of a beer bottle?!?!? You probably won't even remember most of what happens tonight because you'll drink too much, like you do many other nights, and I have to put a guy in the ground who treasured and lived every minute of his short life!"

Well, then I remembered life isn't fair, and if we all got what we had coming to us, it would be a pretty sparse world. So I got off my high horse, and headed on to the next thing on my to-do list for the funeral.

Just keep swimming...