Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled

Meditation on John 14 and Revelation 21

In Memory of Jamella Charlene Carr Farley

June 11, 1943 – September 5, 2024

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Rev. Karen Crawford

Sept. 7, 2024

Jamella was 18 when Jim proposed to her on the Empire State Building.

She had been raised in Catholic school and had graduated from Cathedral High School in New York City.

Jim had attended public school. He was 4 years older. He was a police officer and had served in the U.S. Army.

They met at a dance. He swept her off her feet.

She said, “Yes,” that memorable day on the Empire State Building. “But don’t give me the ring!” she said. “My mother will kill me.”

She went to her half sister, Dodie, for help persuading her parents that she hadn’t lost her mind, that she was making the right choice. James Wakefield Farley was destined to be her husband. This was the one thing she wanted in life. She was sure that she wanted to be a loving wife to Jim.

They were married in the Catholic Church, 10 days before Jamella’s 20^th birthday. Six years later, she and Jim were the parents of four children: Melissa, Allison, James, and Brian. She stayed home with them until her youngest went to kindergarten. Then, she found work at Dorne and Margolin for many years. Although she never went to college herself, she was determined to help provide that opportunity for her children.

Jamella was not an adventurer. She didn’t long to travel the world. She found her happiness in spending quiet time at home. She and Jim moved into the Bohemia house in 1965. She loved reading. She enjoyed watching Hallmark movies. She loved the color yellow. She drank red wine. A special treat was eating cheesecake for lunch with her sister-in-law or friend. She didn’t like crowds and was often the first one to leave a party. But she loved her family and was proud of Jim, who had followed in his father’s footsteps and became a NYC firefighter.

When Jim developed serious heart and lung problems and retired on disability, she was his caregiver. Jim passed away in 1997. He was only 57. She was suddenly a widow at 53.

After Jim’s passing, the four-bedroom home in Bohemia was too large for one person and held too many memories. Her children moved her into a two-bedroom condo in Holbrook. For the first time in her life, she lived alone. And though she missed the love of her life, she learned to like being on her own, having her own place, her privacy, freedom, and independence. She fell into a new routine.

But then came a health crisis—a stroke in 2013. Doctors prepared her family to accept that she would never be able to function as she had before. She was living in an assisted living facility—and hating it. Hating her loss of independence, privacy, freedom, and quiet. Hating her loss of her home. Her family, concerned about the future, listened to medical experts and sold the condo to pay for their mother’s care in assisted living.

And then, she surprised everyone. She gradually recovered much of what she had lost to the stroke. While her right side remained weak, she could walk and talk. Swallowing food was difficult, so she drank Ensure. She was never able to drive again, which really bothered her. She was plagued by seizures, beginning in 2015. Still, she was determined to grow strong and live on her own. Her family moved her from assisted living into an apartment, which she embraced as her new home, and she began to rebuild her life, with continued, loving support from her children.

There came a time when she could no longer live alone. Her health went into sharp decline. She was in and out of the hospital, back in rehab. Her family was fighting for 24-hour home health care. Allison had just assured her mom that it wouldn’t be much longer. She read her the emails from a lawyer, who was helping her case.

Her mother clung to hope.

And then Allison received the call early Thursday morning. The Lord had called her to her heavenly home.

This is the promise in John 14—that our Savior has gone to prepare a place for each of us in his Father’s house of many rooms. He prepared a place, made a way for us to return home to God through Christ’s death and resurrection, as he promised his first disciples on that sorrowful day, thousands of years ago. This promise is still true for Christ’s followers. One day, we don’t know when, the Risen and Ascended Christ will come again and take us to himself, so that where he is, we will be also.

We anticipate that day to come, when, as John shared in his vision, we are finally dwelling with God, face to face. He will wipe every tear from our eyes. “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”

Like Thomas, we know the way to where we are going, even if we don’t know that we know it. The way there is through trusting in Christ, trusting in the power of God’s love, mercy, and grace. The way there is living today a new life, trying to live out, with the Spirit’s help, the loving ways of Christ. For he promised not to leave us orphaned—that wherever we are right now, even in this very room, the One Christ sent to us has already come and made a home in every heart that welcomes him.

We spend a great deal of time worrying about tomorrow and where we will live, if we are not able to live on our own in this world. Who can blame us for worrying about these things as we grow older? We spend a great deal of time making anxious plans, rather than resting in yet another promise for the faithful that Christ has made—the gift of his peace, not just in the world to come, but here and now. In the present. In this place.

“Peace I leave with you,” Christ is saying to us now, at this very moment. “My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

Amen.