Funeral Eulogy J. Moffett

Jeffrey Alan Moffett

3/7/2001

Every now and then God does something super extraordinary and then wraps it up in such an ordinary looking package that if we do not look closely, we miss the beauty inside the package. Brothers and sisters I submit to you today, that Jeffrey Alan Moffett was one of God’s superordinary creations wrapped up in just an ordinary package. Jeff was not one to immediately stand out in a crowd, but if you ever got to stand next to him, you knew there was something special about him. Everybody God creates, God places a special gift within them to be used to impact others for God.

The gift placed inside of Jeff was the gift of compassion. If you wanted to see Jesus in Jeff, all you had to do was to place him in a setting where compassion was needed and you would find Jeff at his very best. When I think of what passage of Scripture best suits Jeff’s life, I believe when Jesus was giving the beatitudes in the sermon on the Mount on the mount, he was thinking about creating a Jeffrey Moffett down the line to show us what exactly he meant.

Jesus said, blessed are the poor in spirit for they shall see God. Jeffrey had a love for God throughout his life. He recognize his need from the beginning to the end. There’s a reason the Angelic Voices sang, "no weapon formed against me shall prosper it just won’t work." There were weapons when Jeff were born and weapons when he died, but they did not stop his life from prospering.

You see the beginning of Jeff’s life was just as much a miracle as the end of it. The first six weeks of Jeff’s life was spent in a hospital. He was born prematurely weighing 4lbs 7 ounces. He had a normal size heart, but his body was very small. There was a question as whether or not he was going to make it. There was never a question however in the heart of God, for God knew he had a work for Jeff to do.

Within 10 weeks, God had made everything all right inside that little baby. The fact that we are all gathered here tonight is proof that God’s plan for Jeff’s life has been a good plan indeed. On the end of Jeff’s life, when he needed a heart transplant, it was a miracle within a week a replacement heart was found.

Jeff was truly humbled by the miracle of a new heart. He did not think he was any more deserving than those who had waited for months or years. He was simply grateful that the God he knew and trusted in had shined upon him once again. There was no element of pride When Jeff sang the song, "Jesus is the center of my joy, it was real to him." When he snag "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" he wasn’t singing about something he heard about, he was singing something he was living first hand. When we look at some of the trials others go through, and yet talk and sing about the faithfulness of God, it ought to put us to shame the way we often complain. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God.

Jesus said, "Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted." Jeff was a great listener to the pains and sorrows of others. That’s one of the reasons so many people loved him so much. You could always talk to Jeff. Sometimes, the quality of one’s ability to comfort goes with the depth of pain and suffering one endures in life. There were times when Jeff was ill and it would take him about thirty minutes to go up the stairs.

He told me, I’d sing the same chorus on one step, until God gave me the strength to make it to the next, and then he’d give me another chorus to make the next step. Every now and then Jeff would say, "well I’m just sick and tired of being sick and tired." He never said it with a sense of hopelessness. It was always with a sense of frustration that he wanted to be able to do more for others and for God than the weakness of his body would allow.

Jesus said "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." Meekness is power under control. You have the ability to do some serious damage, but you don’t flaunt it and you don’t use it unless absolutely necessary. Now Jeff was about as laid back as they come. If you were more laid back than Jeff, you were probably asleep lying down. He got his gift from his Dad. Jeff may not have looked like he could fight, but the brother knew enough about martial arts to make sure you would not want to fight with him again.