Eulogy--Arthur Swaney Iv

Arthur Roderick Swaney IV (10-10-2014)

The world was a different place in 1993 when Arthur Roderick Swaney IV was sent into the world by the hand of God to make a difference in the lives of people. Whether we know it are not, the Scriptures tell us that all of us are put together in our mother’s womb by the knitting hands of God.

Arthure came into a world in which Bill Clinton was president of the United States. Terrorist bombed the world Trade Center. Israel and the PLO were signing a Peace Treaty. The officers who had beat Rodney King were found guilty. Microsoft was releasing Windows 3.1 NT. Beanie babies appeared on the scene for the first time. People were going to the movies to see Jurfasic Park and Schindler’s List. Whitney Houston was lighting up the world, with her hit song “I’ll always love you.”

If you remember all of those things I mentioned, then there’s a good chance that you’re getting pretty old and you probably have more days behind you than you have ahead of you as far as this life is concerned. There is a verse in the bible in the book of Psalms 90:12 that says, “teach us oh lord to number our days so that we might gain a heart of wisdom.” There is wisdom in thinking about what happens when you run out of days.

Have you ever realized that you have a set number of days. If you think of your life as a jar with marbles in it, representing each day of your life. As each day passes a marble is tossed out. Some of us know that over ½ our marbles are gone and some of us have only a few marbles left, but we think there are a lot more in their because of our youth or our good health.

But death is not a respecter of age, of health, of education, or of wealth. King David was a man who loved God and was known as a man after God’s own heart but he had one son die in the first few weeks of his life and had two of his sons murdered in their thirties. He grieved greatly over all three of them, but he remained steadfast for he found hope and strength in his God. That’s how he was able to write, “The Lord Is My Shepherd, I Shall Not Want.”

We sometimes forget that there is a rythym to life. There are some things we can control and there are others that we cannot. But there are choices we can make that will make a huge difference in our lives and the lives of those who love us.

Arthur Roderick Swaney IV was a son, a brother, an uncle, a grandson, a nephew, a cousin and a friend. He was born, he lived, he died, he went home to a place prepared for him. We all go through that cycle of birth, life, and death because its automatic. Yet it takes a willful decision on our parts to go home to place prepared for us.

For those who remain on this side of death, the Bible tells us, there is a time and a season for everything under the sun. A time to laugh and a time to cry, a time to hope and a time to give up, a time for joy and a time for pain, a time to be born and a time to die. The one experience that is common to us all is death. It is as common and as natural as all the other things done under the sun.

The Scriptures tell us that there is a way that seems right to a person, but at the end of it is death. If we are all living in order that we might some day die, it should be of utmost importance that we live in such way that in the end our lives would not have been lived in vain. Whether or not we have lived in vain will not be determined by how the car we drive, the clothes we wear, or the neighborhood we lived in. We can dedicate our lives to becoming popular, rich, famous, powerful or beautiful, but for us all it ends at the grave. There is no carry over into the world that is waiting for us. Job put it this way, “Naked we come into this world, naked we go out.”

Let me tell you something about Jesus for a moment. A lot of people think that Jesus began on Christmas with Mary and Joseph. The reality is that Jesus existed before the world was created. He came into this world through Mary and Joseph to help us understand who God truly is. People didn’t like him because he taught we needed to have a change in our lives to be made right with God, and that only he could make that change. Jesus was killed, but as proof that his message was right, He rose again from the dead 3 days later to offer new life to anyone who wanted it. Now here is someone who created heaven, came down from heaven, went back to heaven who offers a deal about heaven. He says that He will go and prepare a place for us after we die if we put our faith and trust in Him.