Many years ago, I conducted the burial service of a tiny baby. It was one of those tender duties which a pastor stores among his precious memories. Simple and brief, it contained all those basic elements of love and grief and death and the hope of a life to come. The life of a country preacher may seem humdrum to the thrill chaser of earth, but dealing as it does with life's deepest realities, it is inestimably rich in treasure dug from the mine of human experience.

This little burial; was a common event, happening every day, somewhere but woe unto the minister who sees in it but a part of his routine. As we stood at the tiny grave, only a few friends, the father and mother, I was deeply touched with the tender simplicity of it all. Here were love and heartache, friendliness and sympathy, the old, old agony of separation and the dear hope of a reunion to come.

I read the familiar account of the death of David's child and how he said, "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me." The young wife sobbed over the shoulder of a sturdy husband and friends bowed with that silent sympathy which words would spoil. The little sister cried, not comprehending, of course, for she was equally as gleeful when an aunt carried her to the store for candy.  Somehow the little scene seemed to sum up the broad outlines of life’s little story: we are born, we marry, we bow in grief as kindly old earth receives us again.

A sophisticated modern world has grown too smart rightly to value these elemental things. Love has been debunked, marriage has become a temporary convenience, children have become nuisances and the tender fundamentals of old-fashioned family life have been thrown overboard. Religion has been ignored and death is increasingly regarded as the end of an ironic joke. Having sewn the wind, we reap the whirlwind and if it were not for those simpler souls to whom these holy ties are sacred, this world would be a madhouse.

We have developed a complicated and bewildering program of living and have lost ourselves in a multitude of things when but few things are needful. To grow, to love, to work, to share the common lot of joy and sorrow; to know the elemental experience of our existence glorified by faith in God through Jesus Christ; to accept life without trying to explain it; to come to grips with its realities and not dodge them in a masquerade of make believe; to come to die and hold "we sleep to wake" that is enough.

So these common experiences of the pastor serve to keep us face to face with life as it is. They save us from vaporous theorizing and demand that we bear a message that can actually meet the daily need. I think the Lord Jesus spent so much of His precious time on earth meeting the practical problems of obscure people partly to teach us that the world does not need our theories, but rather our faith and love and service in the daily grind. Far better than the tongues of men and angels is the love that suffers long and is kind. Better than a clever metaphysical discourse is a message that can soothe aching hearts at a baby's grave.

John Huskins
Pastor