The following are the words I spoke last Thursday (8/24) at my mother's memorial service, published here to further honor her and perhaps inspire someone else:

It has been said that there are two things a parent should give their child: one is roots and the other is wings. I consider myself to have been blessed with both of those things. My daddy, whom so many of you knew, definitely gave me roots—roots that went deep into the soil of human love and honesty. But it was my mother who taught me about wings. She did her best to facilitate activities in my life that reached beyond the mundane and transcended the norm. Daddy taught me cautious wisdom and “real life” while my mother taught me, as the poet said, to “slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of God.”

A couple of weeks ago, on the night when I realized that we were nearing the end of my mother’s time on the earth, I was too upset to cook anything for my family full of males, so we found ourselves in the local Long John Silver restaurant in Azle trying to decide which version of fine battered fish products to order. While I waited for my sons to bring me whatever it was I had decided upon, a song came on the in-store music system. The well of tears inside that I thought I had exhausted, at least for that day, suddenly sprung up again forcefully. The words washed over me like water, and gave me that strange sense of hope that only a song in the hands of God can do in a turbulent time. I thought then, sitting at that fast food table, that when this day came, I would share these words with you so that you, too, can experience them.

Before I share them, however, let me say, that I believe that every life has a prophetic message, a legacy. Every life makes a statement from heaven to those who have ears to hear it, for every person is created in the image of God and bears a unique package of his unfathomable character. We feel great loss since my mother is no longer with us, but it behooves us to hear the message her life is speaking and heed it. To truly honor her legacy, there must be a recommitment to the ideals she embraced, a recommitment that is waiting for each of us to embrace beyond the shadows of tears and grief—a commission that will also comfort us.
I found both comfort and a commission from heaven in the words of a pop song. If Paul in the New Testament can preach the gospel using the words of pagan poets in Athens, certainly I can draw inspiration from the pens and guitars of the Eagles in the year 2006. The words I “heard” not just with my ears, but with my heart in Long John Silver that night are these:

There's a hole in the world tonight.There's a cloud of fear and sorrow.There's a hole in the world tonight….Don't let there be a hole in the world tomorrow.

We who loved Chloe Clark feel the hold in the world—we couldn’t help but feel it. But Chloe was a person who spent her life stopping up the holes in the world. She taught students in the public schools who were victims of broken homes and broken dreams and one by one, and with more patience than I will ever have, she stopped up the holes in their world. We live in a day when we at times hear of teachers who physically hurt their students, but I remember my mother being the actual recipient of kicks and physical actions of anger from the students she taught in the special ed classes which were her specialty. Still, she worked to stop up the holes in their worlds.

She gave to her church and her family and befriended many people throughout her life. She was like a bridge over troubled water to so many and I am truly thankful for the many ways she laid her life down for me, ways which are too numerous to recount here today. I even remember that many of my high school friends would come over to my house, I thought, to hang out with me, but ended up in long conversations with my mother, where she was helping to stop some of the holes in their world.

I remember one instance—now the details are fuzzy because I was pretty young—when she was summoned to the Hearn household to help stop up a small hole. I wasn’t allowed into the garage where the talks occurred, but it seemed that a certain older Hearn boy did not want to comply with the shorter hair requirement that was being enforced upon him. I don’t know what my mother said, but she seemed to find a way to plug the hole of teenage angst that was draining his motivation. (My apologies to Jon if I have remembered that incorrectly—the truth is she loved your long hair anyway.)

In Acts chapter 1, we read the account of the amazed disciples who had just seen Jesus taken up into heaven. Apparently, they were standing, transfixed and perplexed and perhaps feeling some déjà vu. Can you imagine it: They had grieved over the loss of the Master on the cross, only to discover that he was not dead, but still living. They had celebrated the resurrection and reveled in his presence. But now, just as they were settling into comfort, he was leaving them again—this time in a cloud of glory. Perhaps they felt the hole in their world reopening.

At that moment, an angel was dispatched to them and arrived to say, “Why do you stand here gazing?” Seems like a silly question: they are gazing at the point of their loss. But the angel, having diverted their eyes from their loss, redirects them to the future, promising that this is not the end of their contact with Jesus. In so doing, he infers that it is time for each of them to get on with the business that Jesus left behind: the business of bringing the Kingdom of God to earth! In other words, empowered by Jesus’ Spirit, which had not left the earth, it was time for the disciples to live out the legacy Jesus had left with them. “Don’t stand and gaze at heaven: God has that bit totally under control—it is earth that need you now!” the angel seemed to be saying. On earth, there are holes to be plugged and Jesus will fill the emptiness inside you with the intimacy of his presence and empower you to go forth and be a change-agent.
Jesus plugged ALL the holes in the world, but he sends us forth to live that out. Only because of his action on the cross can we, like those disciples, live a life that stops up the holes in the world. But, because of the cross, we can be certain that every hole has its plug!

My mother’s life commissions us to go forth and plug the holes in the world that we encounter. This is how we honor her legacy. This is how we receive her as a gift from heaven. Let your grief be turned to empowerment and after you have stood and looked to heaven a while, turn and find someone to help on earth and live your life to see the Kingdom of God manifested. There is nothing better to live for and no comfort like being a part of the invisible Kingdom and being at complete peace with the Creator and his good purposes for every life.

Again I say boldly, in honor of my mother: There’s a hole in the world tonight…don’t let there be a hole in the world tomorrow.