Woo Hoo! A recap: Jim looks for a Biblical citation for The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. I said look in English liturgy. Brenda cites a variant, but not the exact, text in Job in the Scriptures. I respond that the exact text won't be in the Scriptures, that Job is the underlying, adapted text for the exact, precise phase which would likely be in the English prayers books of the Reformation era, and suggest that my hunch is that one should "look in the 1549 Prayer Book, the 1552 revision, the 1559 primer..." as my first 3 probable sources for the exact, precise citation in the funeral liturgies, in connection with the other Job citation, "I know that my Redeemer liveth..."
The result: Brenda looks, and finds: "Check it out....from the 1549, 1552 and 1559 Books of Common Prayer: http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/Burial_1549.htm http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/Burial_1552.htm http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/Burial_1559.htm I love a good puzzle...." My hunches were right! Woo hoo! This may sound like small potatoes... but since I think that a VG8 is vegetable drink (commercial: "wow, I could have had a V8") and I have no clue what an open tuning is, and all other kinds of stuff, I finally found something technical about which I was right! Thanks Jim for asking,. it got me thinking about liturgy, and I thank Brenda so much for her finding those common prayer book funeral texts which I shall save for future reference, which show the connection of the two Job variant sources as familiar texts as a bonus! I wish my grandson Gage were here now to do the "uh, I'm cool" dance on my behalf! :-) The reason that I am awake now is that I got a phone call, we have lost our second ministry member, Wally, to death in two days, for both Vern and Wally, an end to their suffering and a release, a transition, to the next level of life. I won't be doing Vern's funeral; he was a member of a local Methodist congregation and they are doing Vern's funeral (not that they ever came to see Vern when he was alive, and I was the one who ministered to Vern and found him, in the end, on the floor, and did last prayers with him). Whether Wally gets a funeral is up to the guardian, and the guardian will probably wisk the body away before we can have a funeral, but we'll do a memorial service for Wally if we get screwed out of being able to do his funeral. Wally deserves that much respect, to be bid farewell and remembered and consigned to God's care. That is my ministry: the people on the fringes of society, the forgotten, those with no familes, those with no one else to be there but me, people with public guardians sunce there is no family who will look after these old and dying people.It is our 6th death in 10 months - but that is what this ministry is all about, to be with people in their penultimate moments on earth when there is no one else for them. I am working my way through my emotions now: within days the home will have a few more residents, and when when I look at the folks in the two homes that I serve, unlike the usual ministry, I look at them and know that within a few years each one of them will be dead, and my job is to be their pastor and friend as they approach death, because they have no one or damn few others to care about them in this situation. and the circle, it goes round and round... (the Rev) Vince
