Eulogy April P. Malone

April Malone 9-13-09

If someone were to ask you, how much longer do you have to live, what would be your answer? What would you use to try and figure it out? Who would you use as your comparison? The real answer to the question is “I honestly don’t know.” We all live with this great uncertainty of death in our lives and even though we know it is all around us somehow, we don’t think it should touch us, our families or our friends. Death is supposed to happen to other people’s people. Yet my friend as surely as I stand here today, You and I are all going to one day die.

The One who is most concerned about our death and has done the most to get us ready for it is not the insurance company, it’s not the funeral home if we prepaid our funeral, and it’s not the hospital even though we may be hooked up to a breathing machine. The One who is doing all that can be done to get us ready for that inevitable day, that big appointment that we all will keep is Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “I am going away to prepare a place for you and I will come back and take you to be with me.” You see some 2,000 years ago, Jesus died and then three days after he died came back to life. He knew what was on the other side of death. He then went back to heaven to prepare a place for us to spend eternity in a real place called heaven. Now why did he do this.

In the very beginning there was nothing but God. That God created this entire universe by speaking it into existence. When God said “let there be, it was.” The final part of God’s creation had to do with the creation of a man and a woman. God wanted to have a personal relationship with human beings. He gave this man and this woman everything they needed to have a happy and fulfilled life. That couple was Adam and Eve. They loved each other in ways we can only imagine as husband and wife. God gave them one commandment to obey to demonstrate their love for God.. Eat from every fruit tree in the garden, except that one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

All was going well until one day, a slick talking creature by the name of Satan showed up. Satan convinced this couple, that they were really missing out on a good time. If they could only see that God was holding them back by telling them not to eat from that specific tree, they would be liberated to complete joy and satisfaction. Satan convinced them that they were missing out on something they had a right to have and God was keeping them down. They got what they wanted for a moment when they ate from the forbidden tree. But they had to reject God to do it. It felt good to eat from that fruit for the moment, but there were consequences they had not expected.

Very shortly thereafter, their rebellion not only drove them against God, it put a separation between them. Where as before they could look at each other with honesty and openness with no clothes on, all of a a sudden they were ashamed of their bodies and tried to cover themselves up. We have been playing this game of covering ourselves up and pretending to be something we are not ever since. But God did not leave them hanging. God promised he would send a Savior who could bridge the gap between God and people and between people and people.

Because God is love, God continues to have the same concern for us as he did for the first two he created. God and God alone gives us the gift of life. God in his infinite wisdom has never created two of us exactly alike. Even with identical twins, there is a mixture inside of them that’s different. Even though we like to put the word my in front of another word to describe April, such as my friend, my sister, my daughter, or my mom, the first claim does not belong to us and neither will the last. God was the first to say she’s my creation for even in her mother’s womb God was at work putting her together so that we and He could be blessed by what God was doing. God poured so much into making April, that so many of us was touched by her life in a positive way.

April was a lot of things to us. She had one of the most uplifting smiles that sent out a message of life and humor. When we asked her family to give one word descriptions of April, we got that she was loyal, loving, stubborn, determined, generous, sexy, confident, caring, faithful and responsible. April had the paradox of being a tough and compassionate person.