Eulogy –Rochelle Noel by Rick Gillespie- Mobley
In the year 1961, young people from across the country were beginning to do freedom rides in order to desegregate, the bus terminals throughout the south. Young people were being sent as gifts to make this country more of what it needed to be. That proved to be an enormously dangerous mission.
In Anniston, Alabama, one bus was firebombed, forcing its passengers to flee for their lives. In Birmingham, where an FBI informant reported that Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor had encouraged the Ku Klux Klan to attack an incoming group of freedom riders "until it looked like a bulldog had got a hold of them," the riders were severely beaten.
In eerily quiet Montgomery, a mob charged another bus load of riders, knocking John Lewis unconscious with a crate and smashing Life photographer Don Urbrock in the face with his own camera. A dozen men surrounded Jim Zwerg, a white student from Fisk University, and beat him in the face with a suitcase, knocking out his teeth.
Meanwhile in heaven, God was concentrating on sending a gift down to earth in that same year in the same town of Anaston Alabama where the freedom bus had been firebombed. You see 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 Rachelle Noel and arrive on March 30, 1961. She pulled into the gates at Anaston Alabama.
Rachelle entered this world and became , a daughter, a sister, a mother, an aunt, a cousin, a friend, a dog lover, 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 Rochelle’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. None of us are guaranteed a certain amount of years or days to live. It is not the length of our lives that matter most, but rather what we do between those two brief moments of life and death.
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 Rochelle into the world, He sent the world a gift. I haven’t known Rochelle that well, so I asked her children and family members to help me understand who this gift was. When I gave them the task of trying to summarize
Rochelle life and character with one word images they gave me these words: dependable, comical, funny, crazy, persistent, and determined (in other words she could be stubborn and set in her ways once her mind was made up).
Now one thing about Rochelle, you knew where you stood with her. She was not going to sugar coat how she felt about something. She just went ahead and let you knew where you stood. Sometimes it didn’t feel so good after she said it.
The pride and joy of Rochelle’s life were her children Billy, Dejay, Sherrelle, and Sharia. Rochelle was a person who invested herself and her time in her home. She was a happy with a pepsi in one hand and the tv remote on the soap operas in the other hand. If you added some fish and macaroni to that scene, it would have nearly put Rochelle in heaven. She enjoyed making her children laugh.
Her boys remembered her little dance step she would do to put a smile on their face. Don’t ever forget that little dance step. They could sit together for hours telling jokes and she making fun of them in a loving way. Sherrelle went so far as to say she was so funny that she was crazy.
Rochelle was far from rich, but she saw to it that her kids were taken of. Sherrelle said she knew her mom did not have much, but somehow there were always plenty of gifts around the Christmas tree. If Rochelle was not showing her love for them under the Christmas tree, it could be found in the delicious fried chicken that she cooked for them. It could also be found in the advice that she gave them about life. It could be found in the support and encouragement she gave to her kids and her belief in them. She did all that she could to get a singing career off the ground for her daughter.
When I asked Sherrelle, what was her Mom’s last advice to her, she said, it was to be strong and take of little brothers Billy and Dejay. May God bless the four of you to have a strong love and affection for each other all the days of your lives.
Your mother has shown you what it is to laugh together. Rochelle has shown you the meaning of sacrifice to demonstrate what love is all about. She instilled within you the message, “don’t ever give up” and “try to do your best in whatever you do.” So now, with every diploma you get, and every degree you earn, and every success you achieve, remember that your mother helped you to make it possible. Carry her determination in a corner of your heart.
Rochelle Noel has been an incredible gift to many of you here today. You carry some special moments around in your hearts and some good memories in your minds. But in the midst of this life, death came by and touched her.
God has allowed death in this world, not so much to frighten us, but to remind us of who we are, what are our limitations, and what is really important in life. God wants to walk closer to us than death ever could. God has always wanted to be in close relationship to human beings, because that’s why He created us.
For The bible tells us John 3:16-17 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
God loved us too much to leave us alone. God knew there was nothing we could do to pay the penalty for the wrong we have done. That is why Jesus Christ entered into the world. Jesus offered himself as a payment for the wrong that we have done. It is through Jesus Christ, that we find the forgiveness and mercy of God.
To receive it, we simply acknowledge, yes God I know that I have done wrong and deserve death for it. I ask your forgiveness of my wrong and I accept the work that Jesus Christ has done on my behalf. I give my life to serve Him in appreciation of the work He has done for me.
Following Jesus is more than about simply going to heaven. It is about walking with God in your life each and every day. A God who loves and a God who cares. When God came to this world in the form of a person in Jesus Christ, God choose to feel all the pain we feel first hand. Jesus was a either a teenager or young when his father died. So he knows the pain you feel. Jesus himself was killed at age 33. Jesus came in part to give us the strength, and the wisdom to live each day one day at a time. God wants to work a change in all of us each day, one day at a time.
Some people make the mistake of thinking, they are going to be good enough on their own to get to heaven. Just as long as their good things outnumber the bad ones. Going to heaven is not a matter of having done more good things than bad ones. None of us will ever live lives so good that God takes notice of us and say, that one deserves to go to heaven. Going to heaven is dependent on whether you died having accepted the work of Jesus Christ or not.
The people who go to heaven, are the ones who realize they never could deserve it. None of us deserves what Jesus Christ did for us, but his grace and mercy is available to us all. We may think we have many days ahead of us to decide what to do with Jesus, but there’s not a soul hear tonight, who believed a week ago, that we would be in this place at this hour, for this reason.
Today is the day for us to be prepared to go and stand before God. Today is the day to start allowing God to change us into what we can become. Rachelle Noel has gone before God to give an account for the life she lived and for what she chose to do with the offer of life from Jesus Christ.
If you died tonight, what would your life say about the one called Jesus. If Jesus is not first in your life, then it does not matter all the wonderful things we can say about you at your funeral next week. You will wake up and discover that not only is there a heaven, there is also a hell. We have to make a decision to go to heaven. No such decision is necessary for hell, because all of us are on that road until we voluntarily choose to leave it.
Jesus put it this way, “the road is wide that leads to destruction, and most people are traveling on it.” But the road is very narrow, that leads to eternal life, and few people choose to take it.
If your life is not being traveled on the narrow road, then have you considered the possibility that you may be living your life in vain. The only decision that you make, that will still be affecting you personally 200 years from today, is the decision you make as to whether or not you have chosen to follow Jesus Christ. For only what’s done for Christ is going to last.
Death is never the end for those who die in the Lord. It is a sad time, but it is not without hope. For we who die in Christ, know that a day is coming when we shall all be united once again. That coming day of getting together for one more time is going to last forever for the Scriptures tells us 1 Th 4:13-18 Brothers and Sisters, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men and women, who have no hope.
We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.
