Friends, we have gathered here to praise God and to witness to our faith as we celebrate the life of Jerry Venable. We come together in grief, acknowledging our human loss. May God grants us grace that in pain we find comfort, in sorrow hope, in death resurrection.
When we think of Jerry Venable, how can we not think or see the goodness of God. For in Jerry’s life God gave to us many incredible beautiful gifts: his musical talents, a loving can do attitude, and a charisma and charm that was a signature mark to how the man lived.
Jerry and his brother traveled one time from Little Rock to New York to promote their music and pursue a career in an area of his life that he loved so dearly. Blaine told of a journal that his dad kept while on this great adventure. It reads as comical now, but it really shows the drive and dedication that was such a character trait throughout his life. There were many days that they would travel, not receiving any money for their music and those were the days they would do without, but never having quit or failure entering into their mind.
My first meeting with Jerry was when, as a laid off electrician, I had taken a job installing theatre seating. There I was at Children’s Hospital standing face to face with a man that I never dreamed would one day be my step-dad. That man that I met that day was a respected superintendent, organized, focused, driven and forthright. But when I met him many years later, that same man who cared for his own rental property, and displayed all of the traits I just mentioned, was also tender hearted, compassionate, full of bull and loved to laugh. He would want to ask you, all that are here today, just one question… “Do you have that money you owe me?”
The downside friend of receiving such great gifts, through the life of an individual, is the tremendous and lingering loss we feel when that person and their gifts have been taken back from us.
We all like to think, that we have an ownership claim on each other, especially those we love, but in reality all the people that come into our lives are borrowed from God. We all know that when we borrow something, we’re supposed to give it back to where it came from. It does not matter how long we keep it, whatever we borrow, still belongs to the owner.
In Psalms 24, the writer reminds us that “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.” Death is the reminder, that one day we all go back to our original owner.
Its one thing to die, but it is something altogether different to die in the Lord. The Bible puts it this way, “Precious in the eyes of the Lord, is the death of His saints.” Something precious happened on January 7th as Jerry lay in that bed. It sent tears and grief into our hearts, but God said what took place was precious in His eyes. Anything that’s precious in the eyes of God ought to be precious in our eyes as well, because we know God is good.
As we celebrate today Jerry’s life, we must celebrate the newness in Jerry Venable. AS jerry was a resident at Foxridge, it was there that Jerry and Jesus finally came to an understanding. You see when Jerry acknowledged his need for Christ in his life and understood that it is only through Christ that we can see the Father, Jerry Venable on that day received many new things: a new birth date, a new heart and a new state before God. This was also the new beginning of Jerry having for the first time “a peace that passeth understanding.”
Friends the life that Jerry lived, that was so full, was overshadowed with confusion and pain as he battled the dreaded disease of Alzheimer. But God used his very own appearance to ease Jerry throughout the last years of his life. When Jerry and mom would come to me and tee’s home, Jerry found comfort and solitude in their walks through the woods and down to the creek. I believe friends that God was calling out to Jerry, allowing him to see and experience God through the sunshine that warmed Jerry’s face, through the wagging of the dogs tail as Jerry reached out to pet them, and through the trees as they swayed back and forth praising God as He breathed on them.
It is at times such as this that we are sure that no one else as ever experienced the pain and loneliness that we feel. That no one understands what we are going through. There are even those who become angry. Like Martha and Mary; Jesus’ friends. They were deeply disturbed when their brother Lazarus died. They were visibly angry at Jesus. They couldn’t understand why Jesus did not intervene quicker than when He did. But Jesus’ kindness glows no better than when He accepted their hurt, loved them and turned a tragedy into a miracle.
For all who are here today, God wants you to know that in His love for you, He is willing to take your hurt, your failures, your grief and turn your tragedy into a miracle. This is something God has done throughout all of time. When Christ chose to die on the cross for all of mankind, many seen this as a tragedy, and it is, but God’s love for you and I didn’t stop that day that Jesus died on the cross. It continues today in and through your happiness as well as your sorrows. What most people didn’t see on that Friday was that Sunday was coming. What a glorious day for the believer. Isaiah assures us that it was “by His wounds we are healed.”
Some may wonder the same thing with Jerry, as to why didn’t God act sooner in his life. Well, He did. The Bible tells us that in Romans 5: 8, “But God demonstrated His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The reality friends is that God has already intervened in all of our lives, but He gives us free will to chose to accept it and love Him and be grateful or we can reject His intervention that brings salvation and refuse to see it.
I’m here to witness as to how I saw God’s intervention into Jerry’s life. While he was a resident at Foxridge in the fall of 2008, Jerry recognized that salvation was God’s grace through faith in Christ. It was on this day that Jerry received ultimate healing. It was on this day that Jerry began living eternally. Jerry’s not suffering. He’s thinking more clearly now than he has ever thought before. I hurt with my mother and my step-brother for the loss of God’s gift to us, but I praise God for His goodness and His faithfulness and allowing me to be apart of Jerry’s life and spiritual growth.
I grew to love and know a Jerry Venable that had so much compassion in his heart. He could not stand to see an animal hurt or neglected. Jerry would go out of his way to feed and care for someone or something less fortunate than he. I have heard and seen some of the unspoken acts of love that this man would do. Every time he came across a turtle trying to cross the road, Jerry would stop regardless of where, and carry the turtle to the other side of the road. I can remember a time when Blaine and Angie and me and Tee were up visiting at their home when we spotted a wasp nest on the party house. Well, when I went to be the destroyer of this pesky creature God made, Jerry said, “leave them alone for they have a family somewhere too.”
Jerry Venable was a guy that would give you the shirt off his back and the last dollar in his pocket to help you. I believe his compassion can be extended to us even this day through a story… a parable that Jesus tells us in the book of Matthew 20:1-16: 1"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. 2He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3"About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' 5So they went.
"He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. 6About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?'
7" 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered.
"He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'
8"When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.'
9"The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. 10So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.'
13"But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? 14Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'
16"So the last will be first, and the first will be last."
This parable is not about rewards but about salvation. Jerry’s compassion is but a glimpse compared to God’s grace, His generosity. Jerry, today, would want each of you to know the promise and generosity of our Lord. It all begins by answering Jesus’ call repentance, accepting His offer of forgiveness, and receiving His promise of eternal life.
As Jesus has turned every tragedy of past into a miracle and/or good to those who love Him, today He offers the same. As the Psalmist writes “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. As the life of a deer depends upon water, so our lives depend upon God. Let us depart today with our souls thirsting for God. I offer this to you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of The Holy Spirit. Amen
