Eulogy --Lisa Walker

Lisa Walker

In the year of 1969 , America had focused its eyes on sending a man to the moon. Meanwhile in heaven, God was concentrating on sending a gift down to earth. Every now and then God decides to add a little something extra special to the family of humanity and wraps it up in a little package that we know as a little girl. This little girl was called Lisa Walker and on July 24th, 1969 she landed from heaven at a place we know as Cleveland, Ohio.

Lisa Walker entered this world and became , a daughter, a sister, a mother, an aunt, a cousin, a friend, an athlete a good Samaritan, a co worker, and a child of God. She has made the journey from the heavens to the earth and back to the heavens once again.

It’s never easy saying goodbye to someone we love and care about. God shares in our suffering and grief in that the Lord knows the loss that we feel. Jesus Himself cried with Mary and Martha in the loss of their brother. But at the same time God gives a special hope in moments like these for God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in time of trouble. Jesus also said, “let not your heart be troubled, for you believe in God, then believe also in me.”

Some ask “if God is loving, why is there death.” I see it as, because God is loving there is death. Can you imagine what a burden it would be to have to live life forever in the way we know it here on earth?

What it would be like to forever have pain in our bodies, unforgiveness in our hearts, and bitterness in our soul, or to be stuck at the bottom of poverty forever. God has seen all the evil, and the madness, and the pain that goes on in the world, and God has determined that at some point this must stop. That point is death.

We want to think that all of us are entitled to a certain number of days, weeks, months and years. We all expect to die of old age. This makes Lisa’s death even more difficult to bear. But there is no such entitlement to a specific number of days found in the Bible. The Bible encourages us in Psalm 90:12 (NIV) Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. The message of the Bible is that death is always close at hand, walking by us like a constant companion.

Some of us are alive today, simply because of God’s grace and God’s mercy. We know we were in some situations, some accidents, some places, and we were doing some things that should have taken us out of this world, but God had other plans for our lives. God is the only reason we are still alive to tell about what almost happened.

Did you know that the Bible teaches that while you were in your mother’s womb, God had something special in mind for you? Did you know that most of us, never get around to discovering just how precious we are in the eyes of God? We’re not precious because we’re so good. We’re precious because of what God knows that He can make of us. For all of us were made in the image of God. But not all of us discover the benefits that come from being made in God’s image.

When God sent Lisa into the world, He sent the world a gift. I haven’t known Lisa that well, so I asked her children, her brother, her aunts and a few others to help me understand who this gift was. When I gave them the task of trying to summarize Lisa’s life and character with one word images they gave me these words: provider, strong, caring, giving, athletic, determined, courage, love, honest, respectful, kind, free hearted.

Lisa’s brother’s Edward went on to say that she was a super woman. I heard that Lisa just wanted you to be real in who you were in dealing with her. She wasn’t interested in you being phony around her or playing games. She could accept you for who you were just as long as you were being real.

She was the kind of woman who did what she said she was going to do. Once she made up her mind on something, you could be pretty sure that it was going to get done.

As a child, Lisa had the love and protection that comes with being the baby in the family, surrounded by the love of Johnetta, Edward and Sharon. Lisa was quiet and peace loving except for her frequent fights with Sharon, her next in age sister. Once they were told, that if they were caught fighting again, they would be in big trouble.