I would venture to say that when we attend church, it’s not considered a very humorous place. Let’s face it, we go to church to pay respect to our faith in God and the rules that we are supposed to live our daily lives by. This is not to say that there aren’t instances that something funny happens sometimes on purpose and sometimes by mistake. For me, this past Sunday was one of those humorous mistakes, and I’ve laughed about it many times in the last few days.

First of all, let me explain. I attend a very small country church located near Castell, Texas. I grew up in this church and once again became a member about eight years ago when my mother was getting older and I soon became president. When I say small, our membership ranges from 18 to 28 attendees each week and of course, that number doubles at Christmas and Easter. The church grounds are surrounded by ranch land and most of the membership either own cattle or at some point in time were involved in the cattle business. The church grounds also have a cemetery for membership that the church maintains professionally and efficiently.

The cattle auction in Mason, Texas holds their weekly sales on Mondays, so it makes it very handy for me to deliver the cows and calves that I want to sell on Sundays. It just so happened that this past Sunday, I got up at sunrise, penned our cows near our house to sell two cows that I knew bred late this past spring. Not thinking anything about it, I decided to load them up on the trailer and to save some time, took them to church with me. I decided to park them under a big shade tree near the church cemetery that was out of the way. I remembered thinking, this is working out great as I entered the church for service.

Our pastor began the service, forgave of our sins and then we sang a hymn, followed by the scripture reading. When our pastor got to the Gospel reading, he read John 5:28-29 which said:

“Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out –those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.”

Next, he explained the scripture by saying, “Jesus Himself notes that the ultimate catalyst for the dead rising will be the vocal sound capable of being heard by those in the grave.” Just as he had finished this statement, both cows in the trailer parked by the cemetery started bawling really loudly! This definitely startled our pastor because you could tell he had lost his train of thought, and then he turned somewhat pale, as I recall. Finally, he asked, “Did anyone else hear a cry from down at the church cemetery?”

To say the least, I was somewhat embarrassed by what had just happened. I immediately responded by telling him not to worry about it because it was just Dolly and Mary Lou and they were wanting to get out. Although I don’t like to name cows, I did actually let my wife name two of the cows that she was most fond of and of course these were the two. Our pastor was now very confused and shaken by this whole experience and asked if they were past members or just visitors.

I now understood that he was not aware of the situation and so I did a better job of explaining where and how the cries came and reassured him that no one was trying to get out of the cemetery.

Afterwards, his sermon was very brief and to be honest with you, I’m not really certain what he said. I kept thinking about how I was going to apologize after the service and how the pastor might respond. Thank goodness we had a good laugh after church, and he told me this was a first in his many years of preaching. I once again apologized, walked to my truck and trailer, and took Dolly and Mary Lou back to the pasture and turned them back out knowing that they had been saved twice that day, once at church and now by me and that was a good enough sign for me.