Eternal Life

Ten years.  A decade since we've looked into your eyes, heard your voice, felt your touch.  Ten years.  And yet you live on in our memories, in our thoughts, through our love.  You live on in the ways that knowing you changed us forever, just by the influence you had on us.  We talk about you with words like "kind," "sweet," "unforgettable," "awesome," "caring," "honest," "truthful, "quite the pistol!"

One of the words most often used when talking about you is "funny."  How you loved to make people laugh, and so many of our memories involve laughter. 

There's the memory of you singing "Rubber Ducky" at an audition for a school play and cracking everyone up.  And then the laughter at your acting debut as Monroe Dunwoody in "Clockwork."  What a riot you were!

You loved being out with your friends, and playing pool at Lakewood Lodge.  How you must have laughed when someone besides you left with a chalked blue nose!

You laughed with everyone.... your brothers....

....and your life-long buddy Scott.....

....well, everywhere you went, you spread laughter....

 

Thanks, Duane, for all the joy and laugh-filled memories you gave us... you were good medicine.  :-)

"A joyful heart is good medicine..."  Proverbs 17:22a

 

But ten years is just a "blink of the eye" in view of eternity.  So even better than all those good memories is the sure knowledge that you live on in that Place that is even more real than this one.  It's just the other side of that thin veil that separates Heaven and earth, and if we believe, we will see you again.  We have the word of the One Who never lies on that.

 

"I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life.

~  Jesus in John 5:24