At a memorial service recently there were dozens of pictures of the life of a beloved man. Some were of his childhood, others of his wedding, still more of his children when they were young. In an obtuse way, I felt like I was time traveling to see his bright face before he knew what I know about his future. He would fall in love with a darling woman, marry, and have three sons and two daughters. He would change religions, enter the ministry, and impact thousands of lives.

There was a photograph of him in the Australian military, youthful and brimming with possibilities. He was the age of my own son, whose future I am not privy to. 

I felt a twinge of omniscience, gazing at the expanse of his ninety years on four slabs of foam core. Even as only a friend of the family, I am aware of heartbreaks that peppered those decades. Yet in the panorama of a lifetime, they seemed less like earthquakes, and more like tremors. 

God is omniscient. Probably He is less anxious about the worry list that I keep current, in part because He knows the broad story. Yes Ben was diagnosed with failure to thrive at five months and it was all I could do to keep breathing. But a scant eighteen years later there is enough laughter and singing to dilute the terror I felt then.

God even sent a message to assure me of that. I was driving along California Avenue, with my fragile infant in the back seat, when the wheel went over a bulge in the road. 

"This is only a bump." The voice in my head was as audible as the traffic. 

My initial response was indignation. How dare He imply that this travesty was not a 9.0 quake?

But He was right. 

While none of us save Tom Sawyer can go to our own funeral, and hear what people profess about our brief time on this planet, we might dare to believe that it will end well.