Introductory Prayer from the Life Celebration for Brad Wallace:
Father God, Lord of Heaven and Earth; Eternal Provider, Healer, and Comforter; we are gathered here today to give You thanks for, and say goodbye to, my brother, Bradley Wallace.
We know that you have designed the role of earthly fathers to be many things: protector, provider, comforter, patient teacher, husband, lover, companion, ... In fact, we are to be examples to our families of what You are. They are supposed to be able to look at us, at our lives and character and learn from this what their perfect, Heavenly Father is like.
The fact is that we aren’t perfect; my brother wasn’t perfect, our father wasn’t and I’m not either. But he was wonderful, nevertheless. He was very aware that he probably didn’t have a lot of time to spare so he invested it wisely. He was a good provider and worked very hard to give his family everything he could. He spent as much time with them as possible. He taught them at every opportunity. He poured out love on all of us, his friends and family, and told us so. He was so proud of his family. He loved his wife, Ann, and he showed it. He taught them by example to love life, to laugh as often as possible, to make music and sing at every opportunity, to enjoy nature, to love each other and their friends, to be available when people needed them, to share what You have given to them with those in need, to enjoy being alone, to be willing to try new things, to love to travel and meet new people, to be creative and willing to make mistakes in the process, and then to learn from them and go on.
In fact, he did a good job. We are proud to have had such a man for our brother, father and friend, and we thank You for him.
Now Lord, we ask that your Holy Spirit would bring anything which remains unresolved with Bradley to our minds; any hurts, any perceived slights, any unforgiveness, in fact, anything at all that comes to mind that we need to deal with. (long pause) And now, we release these things to You, Lord. We forgive Brad for not being perfect. And we release each of these things to You. We say that we have been truly blessed to have had him as father, brother and friend. We acknowledge that in many cases, You have used him to teach, guide and mold us into what we are. We thank you for your provision.
Thank you Lord; You are a Great and Glorious God. We love and worship You for what You have accomplished through Brad. He will live on through all of our great memories, through what he taught and modeled to us, and through his wife and children. We are better people because of him. And now we let him go.
We now release him to you, Lord. We release him into Your presence. We miss him terribly and look forward to the day when we will be reunited. We say good-bye to him for now.
Good bye, Brad. See you soon.
Amen.