Lee Ann, thank you for helping us get to know your mama a little better. Both you and Gena shared so many stories about your mom. They say a good eulogy makes the people who knew the person glad they did, and the people who didn’t wish they had. Your family has done that so well.
There are others that have shared tributes and memories. On the tribute wall on Ridout’s website, Yvonne Evans wrote, “Sherry’s friendship was one of my life’s great blessings. I have so many memories of happy times we shared. Love and prayers to her family—she cherished you all.”
And Diane Lively, Sherry’s niece, wrote, Let me tell you a little bit about my Aunt Sherry!! I have been truly blessed to have her as my aunt for 54 years! Not one time in that period of time have I had not felt her love for me and our family! She always had a smile on her face and we have nicknamed her and her two sisters the giggle girls! My heart is truly broken but I know that she is in heaven with the ones that went before her! What a celebration that must be! I love you and I miss you already Aunt Sherry!! God truly blessed me with an aunt like you!
I can tell you personally what a blessing Sherry was to me. I first met her when I was on staff at First Baptist Church across town. She was always faithful to come to my Sunday school class. When Glynwood asked me to be their pastor, Sherry started coming here, and she jumped in so quickly that it was like she had always been here. She hardly ever missed a Wednesday night prayer meeting, even though the plastic folding chairs hurt her back. When she told me that, I wheeled one of the nicer chairs from my conference room into the Fellowship Hall.
One Wednesday I forgot to do that. And as I was talking to someone else, I heard the sound of an office chair being rolled across the tile floor. I looked up, and here came Sherry and Olivia, rolling their chairs around the corner from my conference room. I apologized for forgetting, and they were like, “Don’t worry! We’re good!”
I would always see the twinkle in Sherry’s eye. I knew she loved to laugh. When LeeAnn and Gena told me that their mama would always let them play in the rain when they were little, I had no problem believing that.
I know Sherry loved to travel. She and David had invested in a time share vacation plan while the girls were growing up, and some of their fondest memories are those times in Florida, the Grand Canyon, New York, Hawaii—you guys really went everywhere, didn’t you? And even in her later years, Sherry still loved to travel. She went to Scotland with a First Baptist group just a couple of years ago, and she loved being involved with the senior center in Prattville, taking multiple trips with them.
But one of Sherry’s greatest passions was gardening. She was a Master Gardener, and until David passed away a few years ago, their home in Prattville looked like a page out of one of the Southern Homes and Gardens magazines she and her sisters would pore over together. One of the daughters told me, “Now we’re going to have to Google the gardening advice we need.”
Because there were wildflowers, tomatoes, azaleas, roses, all nourished from a natural spring that fed into a pond on their property.
And that’s an image I want us to think about as we think about Sherry’s relationship with Jesus. I’d like to read Psalm 1 to you. Psalm 1 is written about a man’s growing relationship to the Lord. But because I believe it describes Sherry so well, with your permission I’m going to change the pronouns.
Psalm 1:
1 Blessed is the woman
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
2 but her delight is in the law[b] of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 She is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that she does, he prospers.
4 The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
When Sherry was around twelve years old, she trusted Jesus as her savior and Lord. At that point, she became like that tree planted by streams of water. That’s how Jesus described himself. He said, “I am living water, and if you drink from me, you will never thirst again.”
In Sherry’s own words, she didn’t always stay close to God. She wrote out her testimony at some point in the past year or so, and she said, “Children and work seemed to take a lot of life, and also that partying with friends was a fun thing to do.”
But Sherry wrote that she realized as she grew older that these things were not the makings of a healthy Christian family. So she began to take her relationship with God more seriously. I think this is what verse 3 means when it says that a believer will bear fruit in season. Sherry had been in a season of unfruitfulness, where not much was growing. A gardener knows that for things to grow they need to be fed and watered. That’s why there were so many trips to Cafco. Roses needed food and fertilizer. They need sunlight. They need a gardener’s hand to remove the weeds and protect the blooms from pests.
Christians need the same thing. We need to feed on God’s word. We need to stay rooted in healthy soil.
Sherry began to do all of this. She started to delight in God’s Word. She began to study it. She began to get more connected to her church family.
And when her husband David was diagnosed with dementia, she was his caregiver until he passed away. And it was while dealing with this difficult circumstance that her faith really began to grow. You see, God uses the difficult circumtstances of life as fertilizer to help us grow. Any master gardener can tell you what fertilizer is made out of. It isn’t pleasant. It’s messy. It smells bad. And yet, when it is worked into the soil around a growing thing, it does the work of making the plant stronger. Healthier. That fertilizer actually nourishes the plant, helping it to bear fruit.
The Psalm says that this plant will have leaves that don’t wither. That this person who has planted herself by streams of water will prosper in all she does.
This was Sherry. She wouldn’t have considered herself a wealthy person by any stretch. But if you saw the slideshow of pictures of family during the visitation, you know that Sherry prospered in the things that really mattered. She loved to laugh. She enjoyed life. And the time she spent with family were so precious to her.
We just finished the Christmas season, and my family always watches “It’s a Wonderful Life” on Christmas Eve. And I love the toast that George’s brother Harry makes at the end of the movie, as George is surrounded by family and friends—To George Bailey: The richest man in town.
I would make the same toast to Sherry.
Psalm 1 ends with a somber contrast. While it starts by describing a righteous person, it ends with describing the wicked, who the Psalmist said will be like chaff which the wind blows away.
A gardener knows that every season you have to prune away what is dead and unfruitful. You’ve got to clear away every branch that has broken off the bush. And you throw it away. And unfortunately that is how God describes the wicked person. God’s word says that a wicked person won’t be able to stand before God in the judgment.
The only difference between the righteous and the wicked is where they plant themselves. Sherry was rooted in a relationship with Jesus. And when she left this life on December 22, she was able to stand before God in the judgment, and the Lord looked at her and said, enter into your rest.
Will you be able to do the same?
