Deangelo Ward
11-8-2016
It was the year 1986. Shell and Exxon gave us gasoline for 86 cents a gallon. Boxing gave us Mike Tyson as the youngest heavyweight boxing champion of all time. Ford gave us a brand new mustang for $7,990, and Whitney Houston gave us the song “the Greatest Love of All”. But of all the things that happened in 1986, what has brought us all here together today is that on December 15th, 1986, God gave us the gift of De’Angelo Ward.
One of the most exciting things about receiving a gift that’s all wrapped up, is removing the wrapping paper and discovering what is on the inside. Life involves discovering the gifts that God has placed on the inside of people, as time unwraps what is truly on the inside of them.
Many of you are here today because you appreciated the gifts that came out of DeAngelo’s life as time moved forward from 1986.
Did you know that God had a role in your life, even before you knew what life was? It does not matter whether you are a believer, a person unsure of what to believe, or even an atheist. It does not change the reality that God was working in you from the moment you father’s sperm united with your mother’s egg.
The word of God tells us in the book of psalms
Psalm 139:13-16 (NIV) .13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
You and I are not just a bunch of random cells that came together. God says that each of us was fearfully and wonderfully made. Each of us has been created in the image of God. That means no matter who we are, or what we have done, there is a reflection of God in us. We see it in the different gifts that unfold in our lives that are a blessing to others. God is often at work in our lives, long before we acknowledge who God is or what claim God has on our lives.
As much as we like to think that we are in control of our lives, we really are not. We are all subject to all kinds of events arounds us over which we have absolutely no control. And those events can radically alter our lives in a split second. We may think we have many years to live, when in reality death may be closer to us than we think. There are people alive in Cleveland today, that won’t be alive tomorrow.
That’s one of the reasons, God has given us today, to appreciate one another and to be thankful for each other.
When God created DeAnglo in his mother’s womb, he gave him the ingredients of a grateful heart. One of the things we can learn from DeAngelo’s life is the beauty of being grateful for what others do for you. He could find a treasure in the little things he received. He received a taz blanket (the little tazmanimum devil) and it became his priceless heirloom.
When he received his first apartment he was grateful, it was just a tiny little place, with a refrigerator, and tv and a video game inside it. But to Deangelo he was just as happy as though he was moving into the excutive suite of the downtown Hilton hotel.
His father told him he was coming over to eat up ½ his food and to break all the rules in his apartment, but De’Angelo told him to come on over anyways. When his father got there, there was no carpet anywhere in the place, but he asked DeAngelo if he had to take off his shoes. Being the proud man that he was of that little apartment, DeAngelo told him, “yes, he had to take off his shoes.”
When God knit DeAngelo together in his mother’s womb, God created him with gifts for the Arts. DeAngelo was gifted artist with the ability to draw pictures that would amaze you. He could go from working on a poster board, to painting a room in a house with the same kind of impressive results. He even helped remodeled some homes.
He was gifted in the way he presented himself to the world. Pastor Kellie referred to him as petty boy in that his hair was together, his nails were trimmed and his clothes were going to match. Every artist has an eye for detail and De’Angelo was no exception.
DeAngelo was an exceptional story teller, he would use his hands and body to draw you into his stories. He had the ability to captivate you with what he was saying. If he got to excited he would start to stutter in the midst of the story.
Now he did use that same ability of story telling to get out of trouble or to disguise the truth. Terrence and Pastor Kellie still have not find out the truth about the party that went on in the house when they were out of town in Florida. They knew he had little wild and reckless streak in him at times and when he and James got together, all kinds of things were possible, so they didn’t press for all the facts. There are some things we as parents just don’t want to know all that happened.
When God knit together DeAngelo in his mother’s womb, he placed within him a desire to help others and to be there for them in their time of need. He liked doing things for others. He would cook a meal so that you could eat. His grandmother said that if she was sick he was ready to go in and fix some tea. One of his sister’s testimonies is that my earliest remembrance of my brother was his helping me out with my homework.
He was there to help you out when you needed some assistance. One day Trinity and Oneisha were trying to use knives to eat a steak and having a rough time with it. DeAngelo came to their rescue and pointed out they were going about it all wrong. He just grabbed steak with his hand and took a bite and told them that’s how you do it.
His desire to help made him a protector of others. He looked out for his brothers and sisters. As any older brother would, he told his sisters, “don’t talk to boys.” They viewed him as a great big brother who was both protective and open. He wanted them to know that they could come and talk to him about anything. He encouraged them to do well in school. If they told him they wanted to become something, he would say “yeah you can do that.” If you changed your mind, he’d say “yeah you could do that as well.
DeAngelo had a legendary presence with his siblings. For them, a birthday party was taken to a new level the moment news came out that DeAngelo was coming to the party. He was a true people person and could very easily become the life of a party. He made friends just about everywhere he went.
You can do that when you realize life is not always about you. His father said, that his son tried to make him feel as though he did not have to worry about anything, because he was going to make everything okay.
DeAngelo felt as though his father needed more education in school so he did his part in bringing his father back to the classroom. Terrence said he spent more time back at FDR because of DeAngelo’s behavior than he had spent there while a student himself at FDR many years ago.
When God knit together Deangelo in his mother’s womb, he gave him the ingredients to become an incredible lover of family. He grew up in three different households and loved the people in each home.
He made it his mission to try to connect all the members of his family in an ongoing conversation so that they could love and care for each other. When new people came into the family by marriage or any other means, he was one of the first to welcome them in with grace. He was blessed with the gift of being able to verbally say “I love you” and he would give you hugs. He was a comforter.
One of the things he loved about his family, was the food that came with it. Whereas for many, Christmas is the favorite holiday, the family thinks that for De’Angelo it might have been Thanksgiving. The boy loved to eat. It was said that if he and Whitney were together in the kitchen, the food in the house would soon be gone.
He had a list of who could make the best this or that, and he tried to make the rounds to make sure he got the right thing from the right person. Although he loved food period, yams and cheesecakes made him feel a touch of heaven.
When God created DeAnglo in his mother’s womb, he gave him the ability to overcome discouragement. We all are going to face some disappointments and pain in our lives. De’Angelo, didn’t graduate from high school. But he overcame that by going back to earn his GED.
At an early age, he suffered the loss of his birth mother, Pamela Ward whom he dearly loved both before and after her death. He greatly cherished his memories of her, but instead of becoming bitter, he chose to become better at wanting to invest himself in the lives of others. I asked the family, what’s one of the best gifts that DeAnglo gave to you, and someone replied he gave the gift of himself. They all remember his unique laughter.
God has always had a call on DeAngelo’s life. He was baptized at Glenville and later became a member. But then he had an experience like the Prodigal Son in Luke chapter 15 of the bible.
In that story a young man had walked away from his family after asking his father for his share of his inheritance that he would get when his father died. He walked away from his religious upbringing and went to live in a far away country. He left with a lot of money. He lived his life the way he wanted to in wild and riotous living.
He had plenty of friends until his money ran out. Not only that, a severe famine hit the country he was in. He was broke. The job he had would not pay enough to feed him. He was literally starving, trying to eat the slop that he was feeding to the pigs where he worked.
Then one day, he came to his senses. He said, “why should I stay here and starve to death, while back home, even my father’s servants are eating and living better than I am. I will rise and go back to my father and ask for his forgiveness.
I will ask him to just make me as one of his servants.” When he got near the house, he did not know what to expect. When the father saw him approaching the gate, he was filled with compassion and he ran and threw his arms around his son. He welcomed him home completely. The father said he had to rejoice because his son who was dead is now alive, his son who was lost is now found.
Pastor Kellie shared, that she felt as though De’Angelo was their prodigal child. Two weeks before he died, he had let them know he wanted to come back and start to get his life back together. He was on his way back home. We can thank God that he was on his way back home.
The truth is we are all are either on our way back home today or walking further away. The same God who created DeAngelo in his mother’s womb, created each one of us with the explicit desire that one day we would spend eternity with him. For all of us shall one day die and stand before God to give an account for our lives and for what we did with his Son Jesus Christ.
Death is closer to all of us than we think it is and we are further along in our journey toward home today than we were yesterday.
If you had to meet Death tonight and your life would be over before tomorrow morning, would you be happy with the life you have lived. Would you be ready to go with no regrets? Have you said your were sorry to those you hurt and granted forgiveness to those who hurt you? Would you be as certain as being in heaven tomorrow as you are of sitting in this room today. The good news is that it is still possible for you to be certain.
Even though God created us, all of us chose to disobey God and to do our own thing. The penalty for the wrong we have done is death. Death is not the end. Our spirits which survive are eternally separated from God.
But God loved us so much even in our rebellion, that he did something to put us back in a right relationship with him. A part of God became a man in the flesh in Jesus Christ. He came and died for us so that our debt for the wrong we have done could be paid. God then raised Jesus Christ from the dead as proof that our wrong doing can be forgiven and that we can have life after death in the presence of God.
Because of Jesus’s death and resurrection, if we ask God to forgive us for the wrong we have done, and believe that Jesus Christ has paid for our sins, and agree to live our lives for him, we can be saved. Jesus will make a change in your life today, and when you die, he will come and get you to take you to a place that has been prepared just for you.
Heaven is a real place, but so is hell. God wants us to get off the road we are on that leads to hell and destruction, and start to come home so that we can spend eternity with him. It’s the best decision we will ever make.
The joy of dying in Christ is that goodbye is never goodbye. For the word of God clearly states, " Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men and women who have no hope.
We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him. According to the Lord’s own words, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left at the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left, will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words. Our God is faithful.
