70’s rock group Moody Blues blended rock & roll with symphonic orchestrations.  Founding member and lead singer Ray Thomas is now gone.

We will miss the comic antics of Beloved Jerry Van Dyke, Dick Van Dyke’s brother.

Alan Bean & John Young, who both literally walked on the moon, now walk in eternity.

If you can hear “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” in your mind’s juke box, you’re remembering the voice of Dennis Edwards of the Temptations.  Gone.

How about John Mahoney who played the cranky, but beloved dad of Frazier Crane?

Billy Graham was one of the most influential preachers of any recent generation.  He too, is now gone.

Stephen Hawking, who said that God is unnecessary, has now gone on to meet him.

The seemingly unforgettable R. Lee Ermey who first was a Marine Corps drill sergeant and then became famous for playing one in “Full Metal Jacket” is gone.

Aretha Franklin, the queen of soul who blessed us with her God-given voice, gone. 

Paul Allen was a co-founder of Microsoft.  Fabulously wealthy, but very generous, he gave billions to charities in education, wildlife and environmental conservation, the arts, healthcare, community services, and more. 

George and Barbara Bush both left us this year.  Very influential and very beloved in this world, have now gone into the next.

Though the above is just a very short list of some of the more well-known folks who died in 2018, it is good for me to take stock, just as Solomon wrote 3,000 years ago:

“It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, because that is the end of every man, and the living takes it to heart”  Ecclesiastes 7:2