Eulogy Eloise Payne
By Rick Gillespie- Mobley
Psalm 139:1-18 Ecclesiastes 3:1-14
Summary: : Eloise Payne was an elderly believer who loved her family, had a special bond with her sister, and gave her life to Christ at age 17.
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Ecclesiastes 3:1-3:14 Psalm 139: John 14:1-6
Some of you may recall the great French General Napolean Bonaparte. He was the ruler of France in the early 1800’s who conquered much of Europe. When he was finally defeated on June 18, 1815 at the battle of Waterloo, many of his officers and fighters fled to the United States.
They petitioned Congress to buy some land in Alabama so that they could build a community for themselves. They settled in western Alabama and founded the city of Demopolis. The city had large plantations built around it with a thriving slave trade to keep the cotton industry alive and well. The officials passed a host of laws to keep enslaved slaves in their place.
Slaves were prohibited from selling or purchasing any article or commodity from or to a slave without written permission from their master or overseer. No slave was allowed to purchase alcohol without written consent; if any slave were convicted of assault upon "any white man, negro, or mulatto", the owner would be fined $50; any slave caught running "any horse, gelding, or mule" through town would be subject to fifteen lashes unless the owner paid a fine of $1; any slave caught driving any wagon or cart or driving a horse or mule on or across the sidewalks of the town would be subject to 10 lashes, unless the owner paid a fine of 50 cents.
No matter how oppressive rules may be, some people have a spirit that is going to resist. Eloise and Bessie had a great, great, great aunt who was among those slaves named Aunt Louise. Story has it that Aunt Louise refused to do what her master told her to do.
She told her master, “You will have to kill me first.” But since she was the head of the kitchen and an excellent cook, the master decided to let her be smart and bossy like she wanted. That gene of toughness and speaking your own mind would be passed down for generations to come,
God is amazing. He knew Eloise Payne would be born in Demopolis Alabama long before her parents did and he used Napolean to make to make sure it was there.
The Scriptures tell us “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart” God has a plan for each of our lives.
The date was on a Friday, July 29th, 1938, the place was Demopolis, Alabama, the event was that God sent a little bundle of life and potential to William and Louise Payne. She was the fifth of five children to arrive and they called this latest bundle of joy, Eloise. She was affectionally called Ella.
We are here today because that bundle of joy touched our lives in various special and unique ways and that same bundle has returned to the wonderful God who created her. She has completed that cycle of birth, life, death and returned to God. It is a journey that we shall all one day complete.
There are some children that are born as sweet as they can be, and they are as gentle and obedient as your heart could desire. Ellas was not one of those children. She and her brother Sam specialized in getting into trouble. He would wake her up early in the morning with the desire to go and lift some candy. They would leave Bessie out of their adventures because she was too nice and sweet.
It was so hot in Alabama, that candy would spoil and become infected with worms. The seller of the candy would allow the people to look through the candy to see if there were any worms. When worms were found, the seller would allow Sam and Ella to take the candy for free. So they would return home loaded with candy. They did this regularly until their mother put a stop to it after a baby snake was found in one of the bags.
Eloise had the spirit of her great great Aunt Louise in which she did not back down from a fight and she was ready to stand up for herself. Even though she was Bessie’s younger sister, she would be the person willing to fight on Bessie’s behalf as needed. You first had to come through Ella if you were going to fight her sister Bessie.
Yet at the same time, when they went to church, Bessie was to nervous to pray. So Ella would do the praying for her when it came her turn. I guess you could say Ella had some of King David in her in that she was a warrior ready for the battlefield and a warrior ready to go into prayer at the same time.
As a child Ella, loved to get baby dolls as a gift. But for some reason known only to Ella, she would twist the doll’s head off once she got tired of it. Her mother said, I’m not going to buy you any more dolls if you keep wringing off their heads. I guess it’s a good thing she didn’t get married or she may have ended up in jail.
Ella was quite athletic. She could go forward, backwards and do spins on roller skates. Bessie said, whatever a boy could do on skates, she could do it as well. When it came to school work, Ella just didn’t believe too much in it and her grades showed it.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t smart enough to do it, she just didn’t do it. Going into her final year of high school, her mother made a threat to her about her grades. That year she got straight A’s. Bessie was so shocked kept a copy of those grades for several decades.
When she was 17, she gave her life to Christ. Her mother told her that one day you’ve got to see Jesus, so you had best get down on your knees to pray. She got baptized and was excited about her new found faith in the Lord. She told her mother, “I’m going to teach everybody about God.” Her mother told her, “well you can’t teach me because I’m your mama.”
The Bible tells us, there is a time and a season for everything under the sun. A time to laugh and a time to cry.
One of things Eloise had from her mom was her mother’s sense of humor. Eloise could make you laugh. Each Sunday she would have a comment to make to me about something. Before we came to New Life At Calvary, she used to listen to our radio broadcast, “Another Perspective” on WABQ. She told me once that Denver Wilborn on WABQ had referred to me as the “white boy preacher” because of the sound of my voice.
So if I preached a sermon speaking fast with a lot of animation, she would tell me that was a good Baptist sermon today. Other times she would let me know I sounded like a white boy today, but the message was good.
One of the things Eloise got from her great great great Aunt Louise who ran the kitchen for her slave owner was her ability to cook. Her mother taught her to cook as soon as she was able to understand what cooking was. Eloise would cook the family meal for her mom. She was an excellent baker. The other thing she got from her Aunt Louise was her willingness to be frank and direct with you. If she didn’t like something, she was going to tell you. Eloise would hurt your feelings because she didn’t always tell you the truth in the nicest kind of way
Eloise was not in favor of her sister Bessie and Bob’s relationship. She told Bessie, “I don’t like him so why do you keep letting him come around. On the day of the wedding, Ella, Bessie, and Bob was riding to the church. Bob kept laughing at whatever was being said. Ella got annoyed with him. She told him, “If you want your head, you better get it out of the way.” I don’t know if Bob knew about Ella’s history of taking off doll’s heads, but he quit laughing.
The writer in the book of Ecclesiastes told us there is a time for love . Ella could be tough to get along with because she had strong opinions about a lot of things, but one fault she did not have was a lack of love for her mother and her sister. As the youngest, her mother sort of spoiled her with love and she lived with her mom for many years until her mother died at age 81.. When her mother was sick and and death seemed close by, their mother called for Bessie and asked her to promise her that she would take care of Ella. Bessie made the promise and the relationship between these two sisters only grew stronger through the years.
Ella appreciated all that Bessie did for her, because Bessie was one of the brightest lights in her life apart from Jesus Christ. Ella knew how to show her appreciation by not only saying thank you, but saying it with joy in her heart and a smile on her face. She was willing to give back in any way that she could.
Even though she had threated to remove Bob’s head, she told Bessie, now that you’ve got a husband, you have to take care of him and feed him well. This terrified Bessie because she knew that outside of boiling an egg, her cooking skills were not that great. Ella agreed to cook the meals for the three of them throughout the course of their marriage.
Their relationship as sisters was as ideal as the relationship between Ruth and Naomi in which Ruth said, “ Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay, your God shall be my God, and your people shall be my people.”
Bessie and Bob would take Ella to her home church New Bethlehem Baptist Church and she would follow them to Calvary Presbyterian Church until they all became members of New Life At Calvary.
There is a time for everything under the sun. We will all have many experiences throughout our lives, but there is one experience we can be sure of all sharing in.
Ella was the work of God’s creation sent here to make a difference in the lives of others, and as beautifully as God created her to be, she has returned to her Creator. She now stands before God, to give an account for the life that she lived and the gifts God blessed her with, as we must all one day give an account.
We all have a certain number of days to live and our joys and struggles are different. But in the end we all come to the place that is called death, and from that point we look back and see what happened during our lives. At the end of our lives we will want to know that we are walking with the Lord.
Ella had a struggle in the latter part of her life that many of us do not and that was navigating this life without the ability to see as clearly as most people have. Yet she always had the light of Christ inside of her helping her to make a difference for others. Her loss of vision didn’t keep her from clinging to the hope she had in Christ of eternal life.
The Bible tell us that there is a way that seems right to a person, but at the end of it is death. If we are all living in order that we might someday die, it should be of utmost importance that we live in such way that in the end our lives would not have been lived in vain.
Whether or not we have lived in vain will not be determined by how much we accumulated in terms of material goods, for naked we came into this world, and naked we go out. No matter how independent and strong we may think we are in life, we all need a relationship with God.
Of all the decisions that Eloise Payne made in life, what she chose to do with the claims of Jesus Christ upon her life, was the one that will stick with her throughout all of eternity.
In our lives, the only decision that we can make today, that will still be affecting us in 500 years, is the decision we make as to following Jesus Christ. For the Bible tells us, there is no other name given by which we can be saved.
Life is so strange and so short even though we live to be 86. That’s why we need to live and to love as though each day may be our last. You may say Ella was my sister, or my aunt, or my friend those things may be true.
But the greater truth is that God gave Eloise Payne on loan to us for just a little while, and through death God has called her back to Himself not as a sinner, but as child of God made new by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
There is appointed a day however, in which each of us shall surely die. The best way to die, is to have lived in anticipation of that day in which we will give an account to God. The Bible tells us that Jesus has gone forth to prepare a place for each of us in the afterlife.
Whether or not we make it to the place that Jesus has for us will not depend on whether our good deeds outweighed the bad ones. Everything depends on whether or not we invite Jesus Christ into our hearts to give Him control of our lives.
You see death is not something to be feared, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not die but have everlasting life. Jesus said, let not your hearts be troubled, you believe in God, Believe also in me. For I go to prepare a place for you. Not only has Christ gone to prepare a place for us, Jesus has revealed to us the road in which we should follow.
Eloise Payne has made her choice and her assured salvation rests totally in the hands and mercy of God. None of us know the day nor the hour when we shall leave this world. Christ has died on our behalf that we might have life. He rose from the dead as proof that he can give life to us and that He is the Son Of God.
It is as a simple as confessing our sins, our yielding our lives to him. For in the end, the only decision that will matter is what did we do with Christ. For only what’s done for Christ will last for all eternity.
What have you done with Christ for your life? Will you enter eternity with God or without Him. We will all spend eternity in either heaven or hell. Jesus has done all that he can to show you how much he loves you and wants you to be in heaven with him. The choice is yours and yours alone. Ella chose Jesus and that’s why our hearts are filled with hope today.
