Matt 23:27 whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.
We live next door to a cemetery. Don’t shudder, it is quite nice, actually. They don’t make much noise over there, and the few visitors they do have go home long before dark. We don’t mind them at all.
And their place is pretty nice as well. Finely carved stones, with tender little quotes chiseled upon them.
Dates and name and quotes.. and nothing else. I have walked that graveyard a hundred times and have yet to see a stone with the final bank balance of the inhabitant etched upon it. Nor have any of those rocks listed the degrees or accomplishments achieved. Why, there is not even one stone over there with a list of the friends that were left behind. Just names, and dates, and quotes chiseled in stone.. I wonder who they were? Really. For when they left, the only thing they left us was their names.
The bumper sticker reads. “He who finishes with the most toys wins.” Cute, but the graveyard belies that whimsical writing. It would be better written, “He who finishes with nothing has won it all”. The things of the world don’t count for much in our neighbors yard.
So why even have a stone? Or a graveyard? Our hope is up above, not buried below. You won’t find me there, surrounded by the nearby fence, but you will, however, find me at the gate.
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