Continue to stay tuned as I honor the family as well as share the directions Mother Moore gives me. As she inspired me, hopefully through this journey you’ll be inspired.
Tribute to Church Mother EloisFergusonMoorePart II
Aspire to inspire, before you expire!
If you didn’t understand what I just said, simply read it over again and again until you figure it out – Amen!
Each time I preach at any funeral service, I make it “cut-throat” clear that I’m preaching to the living not to the dead. I also make it “cut-throat” clear that I can’t preach “nobody” into Heaven and I’m not trying to preach “nobody” into hell.
God is the judge for that but what I am trying to do, through the “Word of God,” is mention a few things about the deceased, asking if that individual “aspired to inspire before they expired.” I ask each of you a question… if you passed away today, what would individuals be saying at your funeral service about how, in some positive and spiritual way, you inspired them and had an impact on their life?
THINK ABOUT THIS QUESTION!
Here are a few other questions. If your death occurred tomorrow, who will arrange your funeral? Who could you trust to dot every “I” and cross every “T” to the letter of what you wanted to be done? If your death occurred tomorrow, where would the money come from to pay for “YOUR” funeral? If you died tomorrow, what would you want your funeral to include? If you died tomorrow, who would know how much can be spent on your services? Okay, here’s the last question, for now. And be honest with yourself in answering these questions. If your death occurred tomorrow, what would you regret most regarding your final arrangements?
As we take this journey, you’ll learn how Mother Moore not only lived in the church but the church lived in her as her faith was put into action by having her say and having her way. When she finally came to terms with the fact that her body had a major leak and her soul was about to move, she had no problems preparing to pack up and get her earthly affairs in order. Amen!
If you didn’t read last week’s Bishop Speaks column please get your Call & Post and do so or go to www.callandpost.com and follow this journey with me as I make some major points and hopefully plant a seed in your thinking process to handle something by having your say and having your way when your body is on ice waiting to go back into the Earth from which it came. Now if you don’t think you’re going to ever die then stop reading this column now. If you don’t think it’s “YOUR” responsibility to have it your way by having your say and the resources to make it happy, then once again I say, put this newspaper down and read something else.
This journey I’m sharing with each of you is about one of our church mothers of In Touch forChristChristianCenterwho passed away on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2012 at the Holy Family Home inParma,Ohio. Mother Moore truly inspired me before she expired in a powerful way from the beginning of my ministry with In Touch to seeing her, sitting and praying with her, taking “cut-throat clear” notes from her in her last few days before leaving this Earth.
In last week’s column, I shared some powerful points about the life of Mother Moore as well as her family. I’ll break each experience down to you. Hopefully, it encourages your faith if death is looking you right in the eyes or if death is right around the corner as it was for Mother Moore.
After missing two Sunday Services, a car on the first Sunday, Communion Sunday, pulls up in the church driveway. The side door of the church was opened and quickly I see it was Mother Moore with her husband. Reaching to the passenger side, I could see she was weak, sweating, and leaning on the car door yet I also could see the “JOY” of the Lord was still her strength even in her sickness.
Leaning through the car window, I gave her a kiss and she quickly gave me four envelopes. Two envelopes were her two weeks tithes from her and her husband and the other two were her love offering envelopes. Now, even sick, weak, sweating and on a fixed income, she remained faithful in giving God what was due and not what was left. Mother Moore often reminded me that her tithes were to God by way of the church so don’t praise her for giving God what was already his.
Speechless and loss for words, I’ll never forget what she said, “Bishop, here’s our two weeks tithes and offering and can we receive Communion without coming into the church? I’m so weak, but I had to come to church to receive communion and enjoy the service, but I got weaker on the way here.”
WHAT A TESTAMONY OF FAITH IN THE MISDT OF A STORM! You should be inspired like I was and still am.
I quickly ran into the church with tears in my eyes and gave both her husband and her Communion. As they backed out the driveway with her waving a hand and displaying wonderful smile, I could not move as my assistant pulled me by my arm and said, “Bishop, it’s time for you to enter and go on the pulpit, everyone’s already standing.”
I was in another world as I entered the church heading onto the pulpit, thinking about what I had just experienced.
Moving forward and skipping over quite a few powerful faith walks of Mother Moore, I finally made a call to go see her. Her calls to me became less and far in between after visiting her a few weeks for prayer and Bible Study, always leaving with her tithes and offering envelopes, receiving a “NO” when I tried to give them back to her.
As the days went by and she’d call, it would be less time on the phone. She was tired, weak, no voice hardly, yet she called her pastor.
The call came from her that Thursday morning, August 16th, around 10 a.m. and the tone in her voice let me know it was time for her to talk to her bishop who she loved so much. “Bishop, please come over. It’s time to handle things.”
Calling her visiting nurse, her visiting nurse calling her supervisor, we all agreed to meet at her daughter’s home at 2 p.m., who welcomed her dad as well as her mom when she took sick.
I ask each of you, my readers, yet another question, which is, if and when you get sick, “Who got your back?” Well, I know Jesus does spiritually but “who got your back physically?”
Will your family rush you into a nursing home, hospital or Hospice house, or through love and sacrifice will they stick by you to the very end?
Stay tuned as I honor her husband James, her daughter Pam, as well as her four other children and host of relatives and friends who stuck by Mother Moore’s side to the very end.
Continue to stay tuned as I honor the family as well as share the directions Mother Moore gives me. As she inspired me, hopefully through this journey you’ll be inspired.
I’ll close out with the arrival at where she was staying, getting out my car with both nurses already there speaking with her husband James Moore Sr. exactly at 2 p.m.
Stay tuned to next week – on this “Journey of Faith” of a Church Mother!
