The sun peeked out from behind the clouds and reflected off the car in front of us. I put on my shades.

When I pulled out into the other lane to pass, I noticed Laura reached over and grabbed the door handle, her knuckles turning red then white.

After we had safely passed the car and she had time to recuperate, she said, “If we make it to Tallahassee, I’d like to go to the funeral with you.”

The clouds covered the sun again. I pulled my shades off.

“Now will you tell me about yourself?” I asked.

“I don’t know. You seem to see way too much as it is.”

I looked at her with an expression that said I don’t buy it.

The funeral home was actually a small double-wide trailer only slightly larger than mine, but plenty big enough for the small number of people who showed up for Ike Johnson’s funeral.

In addition to Laura and myself, there were four other people there—two elderly black ladies, his grandma and aunt, and two young people, his sister and his friend.

The funeral home was named Jack’s. It didn’t even say Jack’s Funeral Home on the sign—just Jack’s.

An uneven number of wooden pews sat on the thin red carpet that smelled like feet and old socks.

I had wrestled with what to say all week. I felt it must be something about love’s ability to redeem the worst of situations and people, but until I began to speak, I didn’t know exactly what I would say.

“According to one of my favorite passages from the Hebrew Bible, God’s mercies are new every morning. Every single morning, God’s infinite mercies are fresh and unused and waiting for us. They were waiting for Ike this morning no less than for you and me. You may say that Ike didn’t live the way he should have and so surely God’s mercies were not available for him. But I say that it is exactly when we don’t do what we should that we need mercy most, and it is also when mercy is most available to us.

“Grace is not what we deserve, but what we need. Justice gives us what we deserve, but grace gives us what we need. If God doesn’t love Ike as much as he does you and me, then God’s love is conditional. But if love is perfect, if God is love, then we are all loved beyond reason, beyond deserving, beyond understanding.