Sunday, December 09, 2007

Memorial Service for a Dear Friend

Carol was a dear friend...full of life...a joy to all who knew her. Cancer took her away way too soon. At her memorial service the church was packed. Another friend, Rev. Harry Clark, delivered her eulogy in an eloquent fashion that left all of us uplifted, a feeling I had never experienced at any other funeral or memorial service I had previously attended. Although the service was not recorded, Rev. Clark furnished me with the quotes and scripture that he wove into his message. They are as follows:

Webster's definition of 'friend' - 1) a person whom one knows, likes, and trusts. 2) A person with whom one is allied in a struggle or cause.

William Penn said, "A true friend unbosums freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably."

The great evangelist D. L. Moody once remarked, "Some day you will read in the newspapers that D. L. Moody is dead, but don't believe a word of it. For in that instant I shall be more alive than I am now."

When Dr. W. E. Sangster, England's great Methodist preacher lay dying with muscular atrophy, he wrote to his friend, Dr. Billy Graham: "All my life I have preached that Jesus Christ is adequate for every crisis. I have but a few days to live, and oh, Billy, Christ is indeed adequate in the hour of death! Tell everyone it is true."

A similar shout of victory came from Dr. Clarence McCarmey, long-time pastor of Pittsburgh's First Presbyterian Church. As he lay dying, his last message to his congregation was: "Tell them the Anchor still holds!"

The Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:8, "We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord."

HE (SHE) WALKS AHEAD
(Resurgence) - Robert Louis Stevenson

She's not dead, this friend; not dead,
But in the path we mortals tread,
Got some few trifling steps ahead,
And nearer to the end,
So that you, too, once past the bend,
Shall meet again as face to face,
This friend, you fancy dead.

RIP My Dear Friend Carol