Memorial Service for Wilma .....
Psalm 23
Prayer
The story is told from many years ago of a man who worked as a lamplighter in a very small town. Each evening in the winter he could be seen walking through the snow lighting each lamp one by one. A young boy watched the lamplighter as he worked each night and he said “you could always tell where he had just been by the great avenue of light he left behind.” There are people who are like that. Wherever they go they leave something special. They leave encouragement; we feel better when we are around them, they leave light– they just seem to make our lives brighter when we speak to them. And when they are gone they leave a great legacy for all of us. Wilma has in many ways done that for each of you.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
[2] a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
.....a time to tear down and a time to build,
[4] a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn/grieve and a time to dance, [5] a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
....... a time for war and a time for peace.
The OT reminds us that there is a time for everything….as we read….a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them. Stones were used as markers in the Bible times. Boundary markers. A stone would be put into place and that told everyone it was your property. Some would even go out at night and move the stones….move the boundaries so that they would have even more property. These stones were important. Also in the OT there was time when Joshua was leading the people and they needed to cross a river. Joshua set his foot into the water and the waters parted and they were able to cross. Joshua then told the people to take some stones and place them there on the dry ground to mark the place where God provided for them. These stones were used to mark important events in life. All of us have markers.
(Wilma) had several.
Wilma loved to travel. She traveled all through the New England states. To Texas, California, Arizona, Colorado, the Carolinas, Tennessee and of course in Florida. She always enjoyed the outdoors. Going to the beach, the park, she loved to take long walks and just enjoyed being out in the sun.
She loved to dance. Enjoyed music. Socializing with her friends. Going dancing and then going out to eat with her friends was one of her favorite things to do. The more people she could be with the better. She loved people and they loved her as well.
Family was very important to her. Wilma came from a large family having 8 brothers and sisters. She always enjoyed the holidays with Christmas being one of her favorite times. She enjoyed decorating, placing Santa’s all over the house form her collection. She and her husband were married nearly 40 years. They were a great couple who loved each other very much. He worked in Civil service…a very gifted man who served in the Army as a radar apprentice with submarines.
She enjoyed gardening and she was very good at it. She definitely had a green thumb. She gardened most of her life up until her mid 80’s when she just was no longer able to do it.
Her work. She was a factory worker and did sewing in that capacity. She loved to cook and everyone who knew her loved to eat. She enjoyed making home cooked meals, was a great mom and a gifted homemaker for her husband and children. She loved her dog Jackie.
Her life was of course marked by a great deal of change.
She was blessed to live a long, full to the age of 95. When we live that long we often outlive all of our friends. And she did. Think of all the change she saw.
I think of the many things that occurred…all the changes that took place in her lifetime…
…popup toaster…... …….bubblegum and penicillin
……..1st drive in theater…in someone’s driveway
…1st ballpoint pen
At age 27 there were only 7000 working TV sets in the United States
….cake mix
…1st MacDonalds’
…1st Barbie Doll
….1st computer
...man on the moon and ATM… when I was in high school... filmed in AZ
…cell phones
...web.... my new daughter in law said she has never known life without it
I’ll stop there. Her life had a tremendous amount of change take place.
In Psalm 23 David describes this valley of the shadow of death. That is an actual place in the Holy Land. Still exists today. And when people in David’s day would walk through that area, many times people were beaten, robbed or even killed. It was a very dangerous area. And it is the same when we walk through that valley as well. Sometimes it is difficult. It is never easy. But the Bible promises that He is with us. He comforts us and he provides all we need during this time. I have stood her and conducted services for people of all ages. Very young, very old and everything in between. One of the things I have always noticed is that no one is ever ready to give up their loved one and when death comes we are always caught off guard. I know the same thing has been true in my own experience of dealing with grief.
Time---Talk---Tears
Years ago when my children were younger we had decided to purchase our first tent and take out kids camping. They loved it. We could fish, see the mountains and we could do all of this on a pretty low budget. So we decided to invest in our first tent. We were in the hills of Arkansas camping…had a long day and laid down for the night to get some rest. It began to rain…I enjoy listening to the rain at night but not when I am in a tent. But we all fell asleep in the safety of our tent.
When I woke up the next morning my boys were already awake and they were laughing at me because the tent had developed a leak in the middle of the night and my head was lying in a small puddle of water.
The apostle Paul in writing in the NT describes our bodies as a tent. And because it was Paul who said that it has a lot more meaning to us. In churches in that day, the pastors were not paid much by the church, if they were paid at all so they had to also have a another job as well. The Bible tells us that Paul was a tentmaker. He would have been familiar with the fabric, how it was sewn together and he would have known the downside of what sometimes happens to a tent, as it did to ours that night.
2 Corinthians 5:1-10 (NLT)
For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down—when we die and leave these bodies—we will have a home in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. [2] We grow weary in our present bodies….. Our dying bodies make us groan and sigh and we want to slip into our new bodies that we will have in heaven. The Bible teaches us that if we know Jesus Christ as our Lord and as our Savior that Heaven is waiting for us. And I pray that thought will bring comfort to each of you today.
PRAYER
