Funeral Chapel Service For A Matriarch Of The Church

Good morning. Today is a day that I have known for several years would come. I have thought about how to honor the life of ____________ and how to express it in such a way that would please her. I have prayed these past few days asking God to give me the words He wants delivered this morning. We are here to pay our respect and to honor _________________ today.

But then I remembered one of the Psalms that ______ would always comment on how she loved it and my answer came. Let me share Psalm 121 with you.

I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;

From where shall my help come?

2 My help comes from the Lord,

Who made heaven and earth.

3 He will not allow your foot to slip;

He who keeps you will not slumber.

4 Behold, He who keeps Israel

Will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is your keeper;

The Lord is your shade on your right hand.

6 The sun will not smite you by day,

Nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord will protect you from all evil;

He will keep your soul.

8 The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in

From this time forth and forever.

______ lived those words. She relied on the Lord for everything she did. No matter how bad things seemed, she would praise God for what she had and always comment, “The Lord will take care of this.”

I can hear her saying that now. “Bro. Jerry, the Lord will take care of this.”

You all knew her so there is not a lot I can say that you don’t already know. But as her pastor, I want to talk a bit about how I knew ______. ______ was most pastor’s dream church member. She was the epitome of what a Christian should be. I don’t think there was ever a time that I talked to her that she wasn’t praising the Lord for something.

______ was a member of SEBC when I came here as pastor in Nov., 1996. So, I have been her pastor over 20 years now. She has supported me when others didn’t. She encouraged me when others turned their backs. She has corrected me, when I needed to be corrected. She loved me and respected me as her pastor like no one else.

As was has already stated, ______ was a truly active church member. I knew her as the teacher of the Genesis Sunday School class. When I came on, that class was held in what is now our records room—a little 10ftX10ft. room. She had several class members but never complained that the room was a tight fit. We eventually expanded the adult Sunday school area and the Genesis class met in what is now an office. It was a 10X17ft room. You would have thought I gave her a million dollars. She was so proud of her new classroom.

Well, as the church grew and we moved into this sanctuary, we moved our adult education area to the old sanctuary. ______ now had an even larger room which is still the Genesis classroom today.

I sat in on a few of her Sunday school classes. She was an excellent teacher. She would get into the lesson and, as I told her, she went from teaching to preaching. She would just laugh. She was committed to sharing the message of salvation. She would be teaching along following the book and suddenly take off on the plan of salvation. And she would preach.

It was important to her that people knew how and why you should accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. The Lord’s light shone from her wherever she went. She never seemed to discouraged because she knew that her help was going to come from the Lord.

For instance, I was in the room with her, her daughter, and her husband on the day when her husband went to be with the Lord. She was already confined to the bed at that time. She was in the regular bed and John was in the hospital bed next to her. John wasn’t doing well that day. We prayed, but I’m not sure John was conscious at the time.

As I talked with _______ and her daughter, I glanced over at her husband and knew his spirit had left him. He had gone on to be with the Lord. I told her that he was gone. Now most people would have gone into a frantic frenzy of grief and despair. But she simply said, “Well, I know where he has gone. He is much better now.” WHAT SPIRITUAL STRENGTH!!!

I am sure she grieved over losing her husband, but she never showed it. She praised the Lord for the years He had given her and John together. And she carried on with life knowing that the Lord was going to lend His help in their time of need.