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The Rev. Frank
Logue
Renewed Day by Day Here is what I know. Barbara will tell me the truth. One day, when we see one another again. She will let me know how I did this night. And so I am working hard to follow her wishes. Now this shouldn’t amaze you that Barbara could keep someone in line from beyond the grave. She had know trouble in this life, why would she in the life eternal. You see, Barbara and I talked about this evening and how it would go. She was very clear on what she didn’t want. She said she wanted her memorial service to be short and simple. No dog and pony show. As her own mother says about her, “Barbara would tell you straight whether you liked it or not.” She told me straight about what she wanted and best as I can, I am going to tell you straight. Most of us gathered here this evening did not know Barbara as a little girl. Her father wanted a boy and so liked the name Barbara as he called her Bobby. As soon as she was old enough, he put her on his motorcycle and off the two went fishing. She loved being her daddy’s fishing buddy. Perhaps these early motorcycle memories are why she insisted that Moe learn to ride a motorcycle before she would marry him. He ended up riding the bike into a pigeon coop. And though she agreed to marry him anyway, she never let Moe live down his run in with the pigeon coop. And in her school years, when she wasn’t much of a joiner, she loved bowling league and came away with the bowling trophies to prove it. She would never lose her love of bowling though she was better known for throwing darts later in life. But if you have come to know Barbara and Moe in Camden County, then you know her store loveable/Bearable New and Used and probably Katama Skate Park as well. I love how the notice in the newspaper said that she was renowned for turning customers in to friends and we can see that this evening. The store was a natural for Barbara. She and Moe had been going to crafts fairs to sell and so the store she started in January of 1999 was a good fit. It was perfect as Barbara already kept everything. As an example, Moe showed me two pieces of wood tied with a short length of rope. When first married, the two were heading off to go camping with a tent from Barbara’s parents, but they missed taking the key roof piece that would hold the poles together. They didn’t have a knife or rope, but they found a store with both and crafted the piece they needed to set up the tent. It was a great example of the sort of thing Mac Gyver was known for on TV, making something from nothing. And Barbara kept it. I think those two pieces of wood roped together are a good symbol for Barbara and Moe, bound together and making something, sometimes out of nothing. Her ability to find the nothing worth something served her well in the store and it was part of how she came to be known as “Dollar Bill Barbara.” At an auction, and she loved to go to auctions, she was the one who would bid on the lot no one else would touch. If there were no bidders, Barbara would be there with that dollar bid. The stores did well off this sort of thriftiness, and though the skate park was difficult to run, it provided a lot of teens with a good place to go for fun. This was good as Barbara was also about giving back. She had taken on Relay for Life as a charity four or five years before her diagnosis with cancer. Of course, after the diagnosis she continued to raise funds. In two recent years her two stores raised more than $3,000 to help fight cancer. Fighting cancer was something Barbara knew all about. She knew the strength it took and she had that strength for years. Recently, she and I talked and she knew that the current fight would take more than she had in her. We spoke honestly as is appropriate for a minister and a woman who is dying. She was completely unafraid of death. She knew where she stood with her Lord and she trusted God completely to take care of her after death. She looked forward to giving up the fight against cancer. What she wasn’t so comfortable with was trusting God with Moe and Kevin and Keith. She wasn’t comfortable dying before her parents. Barbara loved her family fiercely, she wanted what was best for them and didn’t want to trust anyone them. But we spoke and I told her that no matter how long she fought, that day would come when she would have to trust God with them, the way she trusted God with herself. She seemed to make peace with that. The uneasy peace of someone who is sure how things should go and not to sure of letting go. But, Barbara was tired. She had fought and won and knew she didn’t have that strength anymore. That’s why I chose our reading from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. Paul writes, We do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. Barbara well knew that her outer nature was wasting away. She knew the real depth of suffering in what Paul calls “this slight momentary affliction.” And as we gather to celebrate her life as we mourn her death, we need to understand that what is seen is temporary. Though it felt all too long, Barbara’s wasting away from cancer was temporary. What is eternal is the inner nature that was being renewed day by day even as her outer nature was wasting away. If you don’t believe me, look at the facts. It is a fact that Barbara fought hard against cancer from strong inner reserves. But it is also true that if she had not been renewed day by day, she would not have made it as long as she did. And the source of that renewal was her love for her family and friends and her hope that her Lord was going to pull out another miracle. Well she did get her healing and it wasn’t the one we were hoping for. She was healed completely from cancer in passing from life to death and on to life eternal. That is why Paul went on to write, “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens….He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.” It is the spirit of God within us that we now count on to renew us day by day. We pray that God will give the peace that passes understanding to Barbara’s parents, her husband, children, grandchildren, other family and friends so that all who mourn will also be renewed day by day. Because gathering to mourn for Barbara is only temporary. If you can come to trust God with your life, with that same quiet confidence Barbara had about her own eternal destiny, then you too can look to a house not made with human hands, but one eternal in the heavens. And when you get there Barbara will be there. You might not recognize her at first, because the cancer is gone. But she’ll be there. When you see her, let her know, we told it as straight this night as we could—her suffering was temporary, it’s her life that was eternal. Amen.
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