I once heard the story of a young girl who walked thru a cemetery every night because it was the shortest route to her house. When asked WHY she HAD NO FEAR of passing thru the graveyard she responded "The reason I’m not afraid…my home is just on the other side.”
This morning we have gathered to celebrate the life a woman who has made her way home over to the other side.
Paul wrote: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ” indicating that once he died he would go immediately to be with Jesus. And that’s where Barb is right now.
Barb was an interesting woman. She was an outdoorsy kind of girl. She loved getting in the 4 wheeler with her husband Don and going back to the wetlands to spend time observing the wildlife there. And she loved going fishing. Amongst the pictures you saw here was one of her with a huge fish that she’d caught. She loved fishing so much that once, when she saw the fishing boat in the drive, she told Don that that boat wasn’t going anywhere without her.
Of course, fishing wasn’t always a pleasant experience: One time, when they returned to the dock Don held the boat still while Barb put her foot up on the dock. Without watching too closely, Don thought she had had time to safely get up on the dock and began to back the boat slowly away to prepare to get it in position to bring it out of the water. However, Barb’s foot had gotten stuck on the railing of the boat, and it pulled away from the dock she began to do the splits and ultimately (before she fell into the 2 foot deep water) she could be heard shouting her husbands first, middle and last names. Their son John has commented that when his mom used all 3 of your names… you were in trouble.
And Barb loved all sorts of other things in her life. She loved cross stitching, crocheting, making lap robes for Nursing Home residents. And she loved her collection of Norman Rockwell plates and paintings. If you’d ever had the privilege of observing her collection you would know it was enormous. She had more of Rockwell’s presentations than any I’d ever seen before.
She Loved All Those Things. She loved the outdoors, fishing, working with fabric and collecting Rockwell paintings and plates. But there something she loved more than those. She loved Don. Linda, one of her nurses at the Living Facility Barb lived in for the past few years, said Barb would get excited when she knew Don was coming to visit. Barb called him her “Amazing Don.”
Linda said that despite Barb’s serious Alzheimer’s there were a couple of songs Barb always loved to hear and sing. One of those songs was the one Barb thought of when she thought of Don. I’d like you to sing it with me if you would: “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when SKIES are grey. You’ll never know dear, how much I love you. Please, don’t take my sunshine away.”
Barb loved Don so much that she paid attention to the little things. In the summer, when he was out mowing, she’d always bring him a glass of water. And in the winter, when the driveway was covered with snow, she and the boys would shovel out the drive so that he could drive into the garage without any difficulty.
And she always wanted a kiss when he had to go somewhere and couldn’t take her with him. One time Don was in a hurry – and forgot to kiss her. She grabbed him by his coat and said “Come Here” … and tore all the buttons off his coat.
No question about it… Barb Loved Don.
But there was SOMEONE Barb loved even more than Don… and that someone was Jesus. Barb was raised a Methodist, but had never been baptized into Christ, but one week after she and Don were married – she was baptized… and she’d been in love with Jesus ever since. She helped kids go to camp, made lap robes for those in the Nursing Home, was involved in missions, taught the kids in JAM (the Wednesday night elementary youth) at the Treaty Church of Christ, and faithfully studied Bible with her sons.
As someone once noted “She may have lived her last year’s forgetting memories and faces but she has never forgotten her Lord and Saviour.” Jesus was the center of her life… Don was a close 2nd.
Anyone who knew Barb knew she was a really nice person… a really good woman. She’s the kind of person that folks will say “If anyone should get into heaven Barb should… because she was such a good person.”
But Barb knew the Bible well enough to realize… that wasn’t true. She would know that none of us are good enough to deserve heaven. She would know that ALL of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. None of us are good enough to be good enough to earn salvation. The only hope we have is in Jesus. Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
ILLUS: This concept is always puzzling, but one day (at a funeral) I suddenly realized how to explain this truth. At most funerals there are flowers that friends and family have purchased to express their love for the dearly departed and their family. Some of these are cut flowers – and they are perhaps the most beautiful because there is such a collection of colors and shapes. Others are simple plants, but beautiful and elegant in their own way. All these are purchased because of their beauty – their “fruit” if you will.
Let’s say that the family were to say to me that I could take some of the cut flowers home. I take them home, put them in a vase, put the vase in the window and faithfully water it each day. What will they look like in a month? They’d be dead. But if I took home the plant and placed it in the sun and faithfully watered it… in a month it would still be alive. What’s the difference? The plants have roots, the cut flowers don’t. It’s the root, not the fruit, that gives life.
In the same way, it’s our root in Jesus that gives us life… not the fruit of our good deeds. And that was the truth that Barb understood. That’s why one of her favorite hymns described that “amazing grace.” Sing it with me if you would:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now I'm found was blind but now I see. When we've been there ten thousand years bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun.”
We simply can’t earn a place in heaven. But because of Jesus we can receive what we never deserved. And it’s in our act of becoming Christians that God drives that truth home. When a person is baptized into Christ, they die to their past. Their “old man” of sin is buried in a watery grave. And then they rise up from that grave to walk in newness of life. In that simple action God gives us 2 promises: 1) that our sins are buried in that watery grave and will never be remembered again. 2) that just as we rise from that watery grave… when Jesus returns for us, there will be no grave that can hold us. We WILL rise from the dead to be with Him forever.
Without Jesus, the grave is a locked door. But with Jesus, that door is just a passageway into an eternity with God.
