Eulogy James Smith 10/30/2018
There were a lot of important things going on in 1939. The United States was hosting the World Fair. Hitler was making plans to invade Poland. Russia was planning to invade Finland, and most of the World was about to break out in World War II.
But for many of us here today, the most important thing that happened in 1939 was the birth of a little black boy in Dublin, Ga by the name of James Smith. You see without that birth, many of us, our kids, and out grandkids would all be erased from the pages of history. Our wives and our husbands would have had completely different spouses and undoubtedly different lives.
My name is Rick, and I am the oldest of the children of James, Jimmy, Smith. Our father was a very interesting character. He was a man often times of a few words. He was man who could be stubborn at times. He was a man who loved to fish and to hunt. He enjoyed the horses and the dog races.
He was a man with nine children with very different memories of their father. Some of us remember him as the father who was always there, some of us remember him as the father, who periodically stopped by to visit but was mostly absent from our lives as kids, and some of us wondered if he cared about us at all. Yet his story is a story of redemption, of grace and of forgiveness.
There was a song made famous by Frank Sinatra, I did it my way. In the song there were some lines that said, “Regrets, I had a few, but then again to few to mention” and then he talks about he went through life and did it his way. There is a verse in the bible that says, “There is a way that seems right to a person, but at the end of it is death.”
Our father took a path that seemed right to him at the time as a young man. But as he traveled it, he began to regret some of the decisions that he made in life, especially concerning his children.
I remember seeing our father, when I was 7 and when I was 12 and neither visit lasted my more than 15 minutes. I found out I had brothers and sisters on my father’s side when I was about 11 at Jackson Chapel Easter Egg Hunt. I was drawn to this little girl who seemed like a little sister. Her name was Angela. Somehow the topic came up, about our fathers. She told me her father’s name was James Smith. I told her that was my father’s name. It turned it, it was the same man. It’s amazing how life turns out. My oldest brother on my Mom’s side became a best friend of my bother Fat Daddy as they called him then.
When I was in college, somehow I found out that my father lived less than 100 miles away from my college. I wrote to him and he wrote back. He came to visit me once at college and after that visit we lost touched. I had become a Christian and was preparing for ministry in seminary. I met Toby at seminary, and that summer at the end of our first year, we had to drive 698 miles from Boston to Canton OH.
It was a Saturday at around 6pm that our car’s engine suddenly died on us. We barely had enough money to make it to OH. When the car died it stopped. I looked up and saw a sign that said Schenectady NY. This was before the days of cell phones. We had noonne to call for help.
I told Toby, years ago my father, use to live in Schenectady. Now Schenectady is a pretty good size city, and there were plenty of J Smiths in the phone. I told her, I remember writing him on strong street. Sure enough there was a J Smith in that thick phone book on Strong Street. You can’t tell me, that God wasn’t at work in this crisis.
I called the number, our father answered and he came to our rescue. It was then we first met Gloria and her mom. They were all wonderful to us. I knew then there was something special about Gloria and that God would use her to bring us all together. It was a number of years later, that Gloria got us all together with our father for the first time at her wedding.
My father and I began building a relationship over the years through phone calls, mail and a couple of visits. One of the highlights of my life was when Dad and Jeff came to Cleveland for a weekend. I had put together these questions that we took turn answering to discover about each other’s lives.
As a kid I had heard our father had worked for the FBI. I even thought he was a real FBI agent.
It turned out, he had been an informant for the FBI on the illegal moonshine trade in the Dublin area. There was a black woman running the numbers and they wanted our father to help them bring her down, but when he saw their real motive was to help the white crooks expand their number operation into the black community, he refused to help them and they stopped using him to help them out.
Well I was disappointed that he wasn’t a real FBI agent, but I was glad that he had some principles he stood on for black people.
The more I talked with my father, the more I realized he was man walking around with a burden of grief for what could have been. I’m not quite sure at what point our father realized that he needed Christ in his life and he began that transition from doing things his way to seeking to do things God’s way. As hard as it may seem for some of us to understand, Dad really did love his children. He was so proud of each and every one of us. When I called him on some holidays, he would always say who had called and how he appreciated it and who else he was expecting to hear from.
Our father wanted to be a part of our lives as adults, yet he didn’t always know how to make it happen. When I say how eager he was to receive my wife Toby, and how he made our daughter Samantha feel so special, I realized, this was not the man that had been absent from the years I had grown up as a child.
He had been broken by the spirit of God, and he wanted to do what was right by all of us. He realized that he could not undo the past, but he wanted to make the most of the time that we had left. When we to visit him in August, Curtis he told us you had stopped by to see him and he said it as though it was the greatest gift he had received in his life.
So whether our dad was there for us as some of us experienced, or whether we thought he should have been and wasn’t, or whether we were happy or angry about it all,. I believe we should focus in on what he gave to all of us, and why he was so proud of each of us.
I know several things our fathers left to us that we can be very thankful for. First of all he was good looking man, who passed on his genes to his sons and daughters. I thank God for the comments on Facebook with the pictures of Dad with some of his sons, with comments like, that’s a group of fine looking men
. If our Daddy been ugly, we might not have gotten the beautiful wives and good looking husband and boyfriends that came into our lives. So thank you dad for the strong genes you gave to us, that we could pass on to our children. Now we know our mom’s helped us out as well, but if we all stand next to each other, you know we are Jimmy Smith’s kids because the genes are strong..
Our Dad gave us some strong athletic genes. Some of us were stars in basketball, track, baseball or football in high school, and some of us went on and shined at the collegiate level, and we’ve got one of us grandchildren at the professional level in sports. We better be thankful for the genes we got from Jimmy Smith.
Most of us are taller than most, and so was our father. His genes kept us out fights simpler because we were taller and the other guys were afraid to pick on us. Some of our sister have always been tomboys thanks to that Smith gene.
Look at the number of high school diplomas, college degrees, and graduate degrees that have come from the children of a poor black boy born in the 30’s in segregated Jim Crow, in tiny Dublin, Ga. A Black boy who didn’t get the chance to know his father and didn’t know his mother because she was killed when he was very young and was raised by his grandmother and aunt. Our father had all kinds of odds against him, yet he was a survivor. Our father was a man of intelligence, and we are proof of that intelligence by the things we have accomplished as his children. WE gave him reasons to be proud of us.
Think of all the lives we have touched because of the different professions that we have been a part of as his children and are still a part of. Some of us are doing things to help people every day. We have poured ourselves into young people who have come up from behind us. Our daughter Anita sent me this text when she learned of our father’s passing, “I am grateful to your dad (although I don’t really know him) because he played a part in you being in my life.) Just think of all the people who are grateful that you are in their lives. God used our father to give you the opportunity to make it happen.
Some of you have jobs that require tremendous leadership and analytical skills that affect people’s lives. Some of us have chosen to learn from our father’s mistakes, and we have gone overboard to make sure our children feel loved and encouraged. We took a bad experience and allowed God to turn it into something good.
You know in the bible, Jacob was not the ideal father. Yet his children changed the spiritual direction of the world, and most of us have heard of the twelve tribes of Israel. James need three more to reach 12, but I’m willing to bet, the nine of us can produce some tribes that can change the face of this world.
What’s the legacy he has left behind in the church. I’ve been a pastor since 1982. The only family member that has supported Toby and our church in ministry for a period of time has been our father. He was changing churches and he said, Rick, until I find a new home church, I will be sending my tithes and offerings to help you and Toby. He didn’t know it, but at the time, our church really need his contributions. He supported us for about six months until he joined another church.
I do know the kingdom of God is stronger because of our father. He’s left behind some pastors, some deacons, some choir voices, and some ministry leaders that would not be here today if God had not brought him into this world back in 1939.
There was a king in Israel by the name of King Ahab. He married this woman named Jezebel. They were about the most disobedient and evil couple that’s recorded in the Bible. When God pronounced his judgment of what he was going to do to them, the bible says Ahab repented and wore sack cloth and ashes. God then told the prophet, “do you see how my servant Ahab has humbled himself before me. I will not bring on him the judgment I pronounced.
I believe our father realized that if God could forgive somebody like Ahab, then God could forgive him as well. He realized that road that seemed right to him earlier was a road leading to death and he wanted a different path, not only for this life, but for the life to come.
The wisest decisions James Smith ever made, was the choice to give his life to Christ and to invite him into his life.
So often, we even make the mistake of thinking that we ourselves have an indefinite number of days ahead of us that we can control and determine, but I can tell you with certainty, unless Jesus comes first, we shall all surely die and we will die in times and methods not of our own choosing. Will you be ready when it happens?
If we’re living simply for status, money, degrees or fame, keep in mind none of these things go out with us when we leave this world. They may make you feel important, but they won’t make a difference with your eternal soul. Our money will be left in the bank, our degrees will hang on a wall, our fame will be forgotten, and our status will not impress Jesus who is the ultimate Judge of everything.
In the bible it says "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
Do you realize God loves us all, but death will be the final separator between those who are living for Christ and those who are not. It’s not matter of who was good and who was bad. We all were bad, and God wants to give us all the same chance he gave to our father . If we do not know Christ, we are condemned to eternal death. There is nothing we can do to remove our sins .
Jesus has gone forth to prepare a place for each of us. But like James Smith , we must make a choice. None of us know the day nor the hour when we shall leave this world. To reject Jesus Christ is to continue on to the road to eternal pain and suffering to pay for our sins. Christ has died on our behalf that we might have life. It’s in believing that he died for us and that God raised him from the dead that makes heaven a possibility for us.
It’s as simple as confessing our sins, our yielding our lives to him. For in the end, the only decision that will matter is what did we do with Christ. For only what’s done for Christ will last.
To those who do not know Jesus Christ, James Smith Sr. will only be a memory. It will be a great memory, but still just a memory. For those who do know Christ, James Smith Sr. is waiting to meet us.
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.
