Faith, Hope, and Quantum Physics: Words for My Son’s Memorial

(My son died in a car accident mid-April, 2023. This is what I shared at his life celebration.)

Thank you everyone for sharing your memories of Ben. Now I want to talk about where we go from here.

I don’t talk about my faith very often because I believe that faith is better shown through actions than words. But today I’m going to talk about it a little, because what better time than this? We’re an interfaith household, so Rachel and I have brought her Judaism and my Christianity together to form a richer whole. I believe in a good God who loves us and wants the best for us, but who also gives us perfect freedom to decide what we’ll do with this gift of life. I believe that we honor this good God by showing His love to those that He places in our path, simultaneously fulfilling the two greatest commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” You can build a life on that, and we have.

This is how Rachel and I try to live every day and it’s how we raised our kids. I think that Ben embodied this in how he treated friends, family, and strangers, in the joy that he took in blessing kids in our community every Christmas, and in how he encouraged everyone to get up and enjoy life with…