Victoria Anne Scott Todd
By Rick Gillespie- Mobley
Psalm 139:1-18 John 14:1-6 May 22, 2021
When the year 2020 started, very few people knew just how dramatic of a year it was going to be. I hope that one thing you realized is that it did not catch God off guard.
God still had a purpose for our individual lives even though a pandemic was spreading across the globe. The size of world events do not determine the plans God has for our lives.
The year was 1933. Adolf Hitler was elected to become dictator of the German Third Reich, and he established the first concentration camp at Dachau. 1933 was the worst year of the Depression with an unemployment rate of 25% meaning 1 out of 4 people didn’t have a job.
The drought in the midwestern part of the United States was continuing and a lot of farmland had simply become a dust bowl.
It was against this back drop of world events that God decided to send a little girl into the lives of William and Victoria Scott on a cold wintery January day in Cleveland, OH. 1933 didn’t look like a good year for a black couple to have a child in Cleveland. But that didn’t stop them from giving this little girl a name with royalty attached to it.
This bundle of joy was named Victoria Anne Scott. With the names of two queens in her name, Queen Victoria and Queen Anne, the world should have been put on notice that this little girl would one day take charge and rule those around her with both love, dignity, and compassion.
We are here today because that little girl grew into a magnificent, dignified woman who touched our lives in various special and unique ways. We recognized that she was a gift from, God and now she has returned to the wonderful God who created her. She has completed that cycle of birth, life, death and return to God. It is a journey that we shall all one day complete.
Victoria lived a life of abundance because of the many relationships she had. She knew the joy of being a daughter, a sister, a mother, a wife, a grandmother, a great grandmother, a friend, an investor in the lives of others, and a gift to the world from God above.
Victoria was the work of God’s creation, and as beautifully as God created her to be, she has returned to her Creator. She now stands before God, to give an account for the life that she lived, as we must all one day give an account.
The Bible tells us, there is a time and a season for everything under the sun. A time to laugh and a time to cry, a time to hope and a time to give up, a time for joy and a time for pain, a time to be born and a time to die.
Victoria made us thankful that there is a time to gather together for holidays. One of the gifts that Victoria has had throughout her life has been the gift of hospitality. Thanksgiving was one of her favorite holidays because it was her opportunity to host the family dinner and get together.
Few things brought more joy into her life than seeing love flow through her family members. Valerie said her mom loved to cook, even though her cooking was not that great. It was the opportunity Victoria had to serve others that kept her cooking.
Psalm 139 tells us that we are wonderfully and fearfully made. There are gifts in each of us that we never know that we have, because we don’t pursue the opportunity to let the gifts blossom. Victoria was a skilled pianist, yet she didn’t start her lessons until she was an adult with her husband Earl. This is the first time I’ve heard of a husband and wife with matching grand pianos in their home.
Victoria lived her life trying to equip others to go further than they may have wanted to go. Valerie made the bold announcement to her mom, “I’m not going to go to college.” Can you imagine what this sounded like to a woman who was the first in her family to go to college and to graduate.
Her only daughter whom she has drastically loved from the moment she was born is telling her she’s not going to college. To her credit Victoria kept her cool and told Valerie, “You are going to college and you grades will determine which college you are going to attend.”
That was the end of that discussion. Think of all the lives Valerie has touched as a teacher, principal and Administrator, because her mother was wise enough to ignore her statement.
Victoria had the prim and proper of being like a queen. She enjoyed the finer things in life. Just as the queen had her cup of tea, she had her glass of red wine. She wanted things to be done decently and in order. She set up schedules for the way things were to operate. She had a plan for everything, and if you didn’t have a plan, the good news is that she had one for you.
Victoria was professional even in casual situations. If you had the privilege to make her angry and upset, she told you off in in a professional way using such big words, you didn’t know what she said, but you had to admire her ability to say it.
She believed in manners for children. Little words like “thank you”, “may I” and “please” carried a lot of weight. She wanted her child and grandchildren, to not only have fun times in life, she wanted them educated in the arts as well. They had to dress up to go to the museums, to orchestras, and to plays.
But she also knew how to take them on vacations and trips. Victoria had a more than a generous heart with her children and grandchildren. There were times when she acted as though they could do no wrong. Yes she knew how to spoil her descendants.
Todd said, he felt that love from her once he married Valerie, and she embraced him and his nieces and nephews as her own son and grandkids. She truly became a second mom to him and that’s how Mother Dear was born. Victoria had a heart that was large enough to always have room for more people to love.
Valerie felt that one of the best gifts she received from her Mom, was the gift of knowing how to be a mom from watching her. I know that your mother would be thrilled to know that you believe you are the woman, the professional, the leader you are today because of her.
God blessed Victoria with life and energy. She visited parts of the world that many will only see in books and on screens. When you look at her career, you see a person who is pouring her life into the lives of those who are coming after her. Teachers and educators are always preparing those with an eye to the future. Their goal is to equip others to reach their full potential.
Victoria inherited the trait of reaching back to help pull others up from her parents. She passed that trait on to her daughter Valerie, who has passed it on to her children. We have a responsibility to make life better for those who are coming behind us. Every generation is building a legacy for the next.
The Bible tell us that there is a way that seems right to a person, but at the end of it is death. If we are all living in order that we might some day die, it should be of utmost important that we live in such way that in the end our lives would not have been lived in vain.
Whether or not we have lived in vain will not be determined by how much we accumulated in terms of material goods, for naked we came into this world, and naked we go out. No matter how independent and strong we may think we are in life, we all need a relationship with God.
There is a time and a season for everything. However sometimes we are not wise enough to understand what time it is in life. Things that we are putting off to one day, should and need to be done today. For when it is time to die, there’s no asking for an extension because of something you have to do that’s really important. Everyone will have time to die.
Victoria had the teachings of Christ as a foundation in her life from her parents who loved the Lord. Of all the decisions that Victoria Ann Scott Todd made in life, what she chose to do with the claims of Jesus Christ upon her life, was the one that will stick with her throughout all of eternity.
She gave her life to Christ and served for many years as an elder in the church. She found comfort in listening to songs of praise and worship during the morning worship service.
In our lives today, the only decision that we can make today, that will still be affecting us in 500 years, is the decision we make as to following Jesus Christ. For the Bible tells us, there is no other name given by which we can be saved.
Life is so strange and so short. That’s why we need to live and to love as though each day may be our last. You may say of Victoria she was my mother, my sister or my grandmother or my friend and those things may be true.
But the greater truth is that God gave Victoria on loan to us for just a little while, and through death God has called her back.
Death is so much closer to us than we think. How often have we narrowly escaped its grasp by unexpectedly stopping on the corner, only to have a car come zooming past out of nowhere, or being in a serious accident and walking away with minor injuries, or suffering a heart attack or stroke yet being close enough to medical help to be saved. No, God has watched over us more times than we will ever know.
There is appointed a day however, in which each of us shall surely die. The best way to die, is to have lived in anticipation of that day in which we will give an account to God. The Bible tells us that Jesus has gone forth to prepare a place for each of us in the afterlife.
Whether or not we make it to the place that Jesus has for us will not depend on whether our good deeds outweighed the bad ones. Everything depends on whether or not we invite Jesus Christ into our hearts to give Him control of our lives.
You see death is not something to be feared, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not die but have everlasting life.
Jesus said, let not your hearts be troubled, you believe in God, Believe also in me. For I go to prepare a place for you. Not only has Christ gone to prepare a place for us, Jesus has revealed to us the road in which we should follow.
Victoria Todd has made her choice and her assured salvation rests totally in the hands and mercy of God. None of us know the day nor the hour when we shall leave this world. Christ has died on our behalf that we might have life. He rose from the dead as proof that he can give life to us and that He is the Son Of God.
It’s a simple as confessing our sins, repenting of those sin, and 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 for all eternity.
It’s not over for those of who know Christ. We can rejoice in knowing that death does not have to be the end. We have a promise of hope and comfort for the future: for the word of God declares.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 (NIV)
13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. 14 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.
15 According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
16 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.
17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
18 Therefore encourage each other with these words.
