Funeral For A Seeker

Song #1 -- Family Enters -- Clair De Lune

Song #2 -- I Come to the Garden Alone

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and all that is within me,

bless his holy name!

2 Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and forget not all his benefits,

3 who forgives all your iniquity,

who heals all your diseases,

4 who redeems your life from the pit,

who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

5 who satisfies you with good

so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. Psalm 103.1-5

Hear my prayer, O LORD;

let my cry come to you!

2 Do not hide your face from me

in the day of my distress!

Incline your ear to me;

answer me speedily in the day when I call! Psalm 102.1-2

Purpose of Funerals

1. Honor a loved one

2. Comfort a family

3. Reconnect with priorities

4. To remember our loved ones

a. We generally want to remember our past.

* Story-tellers of Indians, etc.

* Photo albums

* Monuments

b. We also want to be remembered -- we give pictures and gifts to be remembered.

5. Funerals help us remember the realities:

a. The Certainty of Death (Ecclesiastes 9:5)

b. The Shortness of life (James 4:14)

c. The Shortage of life (John 10:10)

* How much do we waste on the trivial?

* There is power in priority!

d. The sovereignty of God and Reality of Eternity.

The photos and stories we keep and remember; the few words of an obituary cannot do justice to Phyllis' life. These things help us with our appreciation, our love, and our lives as we leave this place and move forward.

Obituary

Song #3 -- Lord of All Hopefulness

Eulogy

Phyllis was, to say the least, an interesting mix in her personality.

* She was artistic and creative.

If you look at her handwriting you see an exceptional script

She loved the piano and expressed her emotions through it

(BTW, she even made a reference to a Rhapsody by Paganini at Psalm 138 of her Bible

To be honest, I would love to be able to see the Bible through the eyes and ears of an artistic person. It probably opens up a whole different world.)

* She was detail-oriented

o She worked in accounting for years -- details are important

o Dianna and Debbie said that she was detail-oriented in the things that were of importance to her, but in the things that were not, she was not.

For instance:

Being on time was not a high priority

*When the family would go out to eat at a restaurant the sisters would have to wait for her to meticulously get ready, often causing them to eat very late. On the way to the restaurant, the girls would say they were hungry and she would tell them to look in her purse and get the Rolaids she had there.

*At family reunions they would always be the last family there. The rest held the meal until their arrival. However, the celery and cream cheese she had been assigned were done precisely to artistic perfection.

*She also spent enormous amounts of time making sure giblet gravy and turkey dressing were done perfectly.

*I understand that there was a concern early on that Dianna would not pass pre-school because Phyllis could never get her to class on time.

The Creative and the Detail battled it out in her.

The truth is, we are all made a little differently and uniquely. We know that about fingerprints and DNA and because the Bible teaches it. One of the passages she marked is Psalm 139.13-16

13 For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them.

Phyllis was a student of the Bible and of many religions

Near the front of her bible she wrote this HOLY BIBLE acronym:

Herein Only Lives Your Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth

It is our owner's manual

"The Bible is not a book on religion; it is a book on life." It teaches how to live now and for eternity.

I perused her Bible and discovered that she was no ordinary student. She marked many difficult passages and in some cases made very insightful observations. In fact, she left off some "normal," "common" passages that most of us would know and read.