One of the worst things that a person can do is to allow their ego to lead them in life. For when we allow that ego to be in charge, we forget to acknowledge the Glory of God and the pain of humanity. In effect we are blind to the love that God pours out on us and, in our self focused delusion, we allow peoples suffering and pain to become insignificant to us. Friday, I had the awesome privilege of giving the Eulogy at the Funeral Mass at St. Bernards Catholic Church in Billings, MT for my best and dearest friend, Raymond Clarence Ellis; a man whom I have known for 42 plus years. As I look back over time I came to realize that Ray gave me two very precious gifts. He taught me a great deal about the value of family and he taught me that family is not by blood alone. Ray and I were brothers from different mothers, and he made me a part of his extended family when he married Bernadette Kostelnik. You see, what I learned in exploring the depth of family love while sharing our grief over his death, is that God has blessed me by allowing me to be a part of the lives of Ray and his family; and to have been friends with a man who was more intelligent than most, and yet who never made anyone feel less, or let HIS ego get in the way of saying thank you, yes, please, and you are welcome. I can never remember a time when Ray made an effort to make me or anyone feel less by proving he knew more than you or could do something better than you. And make no mistake, Ray could hold his own in any discussion, he just did not ever make it about tooting his own horn. He was humble and more interested in loving you than in proving how smart or how good at something he was. Thank you to those who have prayed and supported Ray and, understood the depth of my own grief. Thank you to those who have blessed me with your kind, gentle words. 1 Corinthians 13 in the The Message (MSG) says: 13 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2 If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. 3-7 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end. 8-10 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled. 11 When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good. 12 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! 13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love. I love this passage in The Message version, it really catches me. This was read at Rays going home celebration, but in the RSV, not the Message. Either way, it is who he was and who we are all called to be. Remember, God loves you and so do I, and all you can do about it is to love back! Still In One Peace, Stephen
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 03:19:22 +0000
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