There is a story that is sometimes told at funerals about a ship sailing off into the horizon. There are two perspectives on that ship from someone standing on the beach. The one is of that ship getting farther and farther away, looking smaller and smaller until you can barely make it out anymore, and then it is gone completely, and the one on the beach is left standing there, all alone.
This is used to describe the process of dying that many people go through. Most of us know that people don’t often simply die, they sort of fade away and get farther and farther away from us until they are gone, just like that ship as it sailed away into the horizon.
But then there is the other perspective, that of someone standing on a beach as the ship is sailing closer and closer to it, getting sort of larger and larger and more distinguishable. Little by little the ship grows from being just a speck to a faint form, to an outline, to a ship with sails on it, perhaps, to being able to make out people on deck, to seeing their faces, and with that joy grows and grows because the journey is over and they are home now.
This, of course, is supposed to be the perspective from heaven, as our loved one draws closer and closer to his permanent home with the Lord.
I’ve always liked that story, it really sets up a beautiful picture in my mind of the dying process, which is really all about life, not death, even as death itself is only a transition from one stage of life to another; but there is a third perspective that is not told, and that is from the perspective of those who are onboard the ship.
At first, there is just the here and the now. He is alive and surrounded by friends and family and he can’t imagine being anywhere else. But then the ship casts off, and begins to move farther and farther away. And after a while, the voices of those on shore begin to grow faint, and the one onboard can’t tell what they are saying anymore, and then the people on the beach are harder to distinguish and he has to really strain to see them anymore, but still he looks and looks and leans over the railing to try and catch a glimpse of his family.
And then he stops looking, as his thoughts begin to draw towards the journey, towards his new home, which is waiting for him. So he rushes over to the opposite side of the ship, and look there is a speck of land, it is growing closer and closer and the excitement builds because there are loved ones waiting for him over there, too. And he doesn’t forget about the ones he left behind, but yearns to arrive at his new home.
-Excerpt from a funeral sermon that I gave for William H. "Fatty" Fazenbaker, d. April 21, 2009.
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