Prayer delivered at memorial service for Rep. Leroy Zimmerman, January 28, 2003

Dear God, Our Heavenly Father, The maker and giver of every good and perfect gift.,

Thank you for the gift of love, life, family, colleagues and friends, and all the things in life that we sometimes take for granted.  God, we all thank you for this special service today held in memory of our fellow comrade, Leroy Zimmerman. 

He was a special servant – calm, sensitive, a mediator, and an arbitrator.  He was a faithful husband, a good talker, a loyal friend and a true servant who cannot be separated from your love, not even by life or death.  Thank you, God, for creating him in your own image.  May his spirit find rest and peace in your loving care.

Watch over his wife and family.  Strengthen them and help them to understand that death is not the period that ends this great sentence of life, but it is an exclamation point that punctuates it to a more loftier significance.  His ship has indeed sailed but it has docked in your eternal harbor.

Keep us all now and help us to remember – we stand in life and look at death and wonder, why?  But, who knows – in death, Leroy may stand and look at life and wonder, why not?