Below please find the service that I performed yesterday at the graveside for Bobbie Mikesell. May the Lord comfort and strengthen her family and deliver them from their grief.
God's blessing to them all.
Order of Service – Graveside Service – Bobbie Mikesell
Call to Worship:
Gathered in Christ's name, let us praise God
who is our certain hope in all life's varied circumstances.
In the face of death believe the good news the scriptures proclaim:
As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.
(Isaiah 66:13)
O God, our Strength and our Redeemer, Giver of life, and Conqueror of death, we come to you this afternoon in mourning and open our hearts to you just as we are. We celebrate your gift of life freely given, but are grieved by a sense of loss in the face of death. The love which binds us to one another leaves us aching as ties are broken. Accept our tears as emblems of devotion, and transform them into waters of life to nourish us in the days ahead.
We trust you. We love you. We know in Christ that your love is everlasting. Nothing can separate any of us from your abiding care. With you is eternal life.
With confidence we now entrust Bobbie to your unfailing love and overflowing goodness. Through the power that raised Christ from the dead to live eternally with you, lift up Bobbie, to life fulfilled beyond our imagining. We give you but your own, enfold her in your everlasting arms, hold her for she is your child.
Now strengthen us, through the gift of your Spirit, to face into the future with confidence that you stand with us. Grant that the changes of life may leave us stronger as we journey through life.
Reassured of your abiding presence, help us to knit more firmly the ties that bind us one to another. Renewed by your love, help us to love in ever larger circles so as to embrace your people everywhere till at last we are all united eternally through Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Greeting:
We have come together within the strengthening fellowship of friends and family in order to praise God for the life of Roberta Kay Mikesell, and to share our grief with God and to reaffirm our faith in God's unfailing goodness; gathered here before our Lord and Creator we commend Bobbie to God's everlasting care.
Selfishly, we as mortals wish to hold on to Bobbie. It brings great pain to let her go. Living in the resurrection hope of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the trust of a loving God and in the promise of eternal life, we now commit her body to its place of rest. We will continue to mourn Bobbie, but now her laughter will warm the kingdom of God. We will continue to love Bobbie, but God will now take care of her. We will continue to carry Bobbie in our thoughts, but she will be kept safe in God's hands. Receive her in the arms of your mercy, O God, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of all your saints.
Let us hear now a reading from the New Testament:
1 Corinthians 15:50-57 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
55 “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us hear now an excerpt from the 3rd Chapter of Ecclesiastes:
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.
Today it is time for us to return Bobbie to her Lord, her Creator, and her Savior.
Believing in the Resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we now entrust Bobbie to the care of Almighty God and we ask Our Father to open the doors to his mansion and lead Bobbie to the room made ready just for her. As we now commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, we commend her spirit to its new home. O loving Father, your rest eternal grant her; and let your glorious light perpetually shine upon her.
God has blessed and enriched our lives in giving us Bobbie to know and love here on this earth. In committing her body to the earth, we now give over to God the care of her spirit, and we acknowledge that we will one day reunite with her in God's Kingdom. The Lord bless her and keep her; the Lord make his face shine upon her and be gracious to her; the Lord look upon her with favor and grant her his eternal peace.
Let us now pray together the prayer that our Lord and Savior taught us to pray....
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,
forever and ever. Amen.
This concludes our graveside service.
May the Lord bless you and keep you, may His strong arms encircle you and uphold you in your hour of grief. God's peace and strength to you all.
Amen
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