After Marilyn Monroe’s divorce from playwright Arthur Miller
in 1961, Monroe seemed to be lost and depressed. She fell in love with Frank
Sinatra. There were rumors that she had affairs with both Robert and John F.
Kennedy.
Yet, near the end of her life, she and former husband Joe
DiMaggio were spending time together again. Former DiMaggio teammate Jerry
Coleman remembers seeing them together in New York City. He said, “I was doing
shows in New York and I was walking down Park Avenue to get my car when I saw
this couple come around the corner. Joe had his head up in the air and his arm
around her. I didn’t bother to say ‘hello’. I thought he was as happy as I had
seen him, so I left him alone.”
Any hopes of a long life together were crushed on August 4,
1962 when DiMaggio received word of Marilyn’s death. She died alone.
Authorities didn’t know who to call, as she had no family. So they called Joe
and he stepped in. He orchestrated his ex-wife’s funeral.
DiMaggio barred the public and almost all of the Hollywood
glitterati – producers, directors, and actors – from the funeral. When they
protested to him he said, “If it wasn’t for you she’d still be here.”
According to one account of the funeral, printed in the New
York Times, DiMaggio bent down to Monroe’s casket weeping and saying, “I love
you. I love you. I love you.”
For two decades after the service DiMaggio had flowers
delivered to Marilyn’s grave twice a week. “I firmly believed,” said a friend
of Joe’s, “all those years that he visited the grave site and left flowers, he
was still in love with her; but he also did it out of a great sense of guilt.
Because I think he helped contribute to her demise. I’m firmly convinced that
if he had behaved differently, they would have had a good marriage. He
destroyed it – and he felt that guilt.”
This Sunday our focus is the power of memory to free us,
rather than enslave us. We will begin with a story of another famous war hero
who lived in the shadow of his memory. In his case, however, it wasn’t the
guilt of losing a life that enslaved him, but the joy and gratitude of a life
spared and freed – his!
Paul writes a lot about the power of memory to change a
life. According to Paul, a clear memory of our heritage and our destiny can
determine the way we live out our lives in gratitude or the opposite.
This Sunday falls the day after Independence Day. How
appropriate, for we will be examining Ephesians 2 in a message entitled,
“Moving Freely.” Here, writing from prison to Christians he has known longer
than most, Paul sets for the powerful link between memory and gratitude. In
preparation for Sunday you may wish to consider the following:
- Who was Eddie Rickenbacker?
- Why does Paul repeat the admonition to “remember” twice in verses 11 & 12?
- What are we to remember?
- How does our memory affect our freedom to give to God and others?
- What is the first mention of remembering in Scripture?
- How does God’s memory affect every Christian?
- How do you understand Jack Miller’s statement: “Cheer up, you are a lot worse than you think you are and God’s grace is a lot bigger than you think it is”?
- What does Paul say about our position in Christ in verse 13?
- What does he say about our proximity to Christ in verse 13?
- Compare and contrast God’s forgiving Adam in Genesis 3 to Paul’s description of God’s forgiving us in Ephesians 2?
See you Sunday!
