Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks.

Where we connect the Bible to your life,

in the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Patrick Miller. You can learn a lot from funerals, but that doesn't mean everything

you learn from funerals is the right lesson. I think about the funeral of an old man, which hardly anybody attended.

If he died 40 years earlier, in his prime, the room would have been full to the brim.

Thousands of people would have shown up. He was tremendously wealthy, he was a businessman,

he had connections all over the country, but everyone there would have also known the truth.

He was a hard man. He was an unkind man. He'd rolled through multiple wives after having multiple affairs and in the end he died much older in a mansion surrounded by images of his sexual desire and almost nothing else.

In his old age it was mostly his family who arrived because in his old age he had nothing

to offer materially to the people around him.

So his funeral was small. His death wasn't mourned by many.

You could hear that story and say that it's the perfect example of the world working correctly.

Those who give themselves over to sin and destroy the lives of others,

well they'll be abandoned in death. So let me tell you a different story. This is the story of a woman and she died much younger than him and like him

her funeral was small. She spent most of her life as a nurse and as a single mom

caring for everybody around her. She was known for being the sort of person who

always gave to others. But she had a degenerative disease and that meant she spent her last few decades

largely alone.

She had to live inside a care facility because she couldn't take care of herself,

and that's why her funeral was small,

because of a disease that stole her mind and her body.

...