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.
In her studies she had a great interest in prophecy and made numerous notes on various passages.
I opened her bible to take a look at some of the things she had marked and it happened to open to Isaiah 2 -- "The last days."
She wrote of the 300 OT prophecies about Jesus and how he fulfilled them all
[Someone once said that the odds of a person fulfilling that number of prophecies would be like covering the state of Texas 2' deep in silver dollars; then, taking one of those dollars and marking it with red paint, tossing into the mix and the arbitrarily reaching in and finding that particular silver dollar.
She filled the book of Revelation with marks and notes
She wrote out some passages on healing in the front of her bible -- Psalm 30.2; Exodus 15.26; Psalm 41.1-3; 2 Kings 20.5; James 5.14-15
When did she write these? Was it during her final illness or some other time?
It is a noble thing to study and seek and compare religions of the world.
She had notebooks of notes on the Bible and other religions
Jesus is unafraid to be tested. He is the genuine article (John 15.1). WE get nervous with physical exams at the Doctor's office or students being examined on their knowledge. Not Jesus!
He even told his disciples to examine him in Luke 24; He did a self-disclosure regarding the prophecies to the two on the road to Emmaus;
He invites us to search scripture about him --
All of the notes and notebooks tell us that she was detail-oriented and interested in spiritual issues.
Phyllis embraced her family
* She adored her father and granddaughters; and was extremely close to her sister Barbara
* She shared the piano; did the jig-saw puzzles and the coloring books with the children
* She passed on experiences to her daughters and granddaughters
o Movies -- Sound of Music; Ghost and Mrs. Muir
o TV -- Everybody Loves Raymond -- a distraction from her illness; ran it 24/7 at Hospice House until she was unresponsive; she spent enough time with the Hospice personnel that it became "Everybody Loves Phyllis."
Song -- Edelweiss
Prayer and Video of Memories
