The following message is by pastor John Piper.

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I want to thank the family for this privilege of having a part in the funeral service for Jans.

Thank you, Vicky in particular for being a friend over the years and for asking me to have this part.

It's an honor to be here. Funerals have different meanings for different people.

They are times of great grief for some,

and there are times of great Thanksgiving for others and sometimes for the same people.

Times of great relief for others after long suffering.

And times of wisdom I hope wisdom getting because this is way I walk through funerals, I take them as rehearsals for my death.

I don't know if you're strange like that.

But every time I'm at a funeral I think of it as a rehearsal.

I'm going to be in that coffin someday

and things will be said about me.

I wonder what they will say about me.

And I think about my life in regard to leading up to that moment.

And that's an opportunity for a great wisdom because the Psalmest in the Bible wrote this.

Speaking of God, you sweep men away like a flood.

They are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning and in the morning it flourishes and is renewed and in the evening it fades and

withers. The years of our life are 70 or if by reason of strength 80, yet their

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