Print or Email

TheDiscipleMD

A few months ago, my wife and I visited the cemetery where my sister, brother, and brother-in-law are buried. It is always sobering to visit the graveside of a loved one. Once so alive and full of life, they now only read as names on a slab of marble or chunk of granite. I know them for who they were, and still are. So when I see their gravestone I don’t see the rock. I see their faces, their lives, and hear the laughter of their voices.To me they are still alive!

After taking time to visit our loved ones, my wife and I took some time to walk around and visit other graves. There, those that have lived became ‘less personal’ and were reduced to a graven image of a car, a horseback rider, a skier, a hunter, a housewife, or a Christian, depending upon what had been engraved upon the stone. There were faces of couples and poems and sayings galore, with flowers and varied assortment of things that decorated the sacred stones. The graves there held those who had lived to 100 to those who had lived less than a day. As I gazed about the land, filled with such monuments, I recalled the words of an ancient prophet, who upon seeing the destruction of his people,  cried out, “…behold, ye are gone, and my sorrows cannot bring your return.”

I could not help but also think of my own mortality and that someday I would join all those buried before me. Indeed, every hundred years or so the earth takes back every body that walks upon it. If not for my faith and hope in Jesus Christ it would have been a depressing scene. Yet, as I stood there I felt neither fear nor emptiness because I knew that those I have loved have just taken a train to the next station. My faith in the resurrection as provided by the Savior brings such salve to the wound of my soul.

I am still here, with you, but as I stood there that day, I was as certain then as I am today, that there is a thin line between heaven and here, and crossing it is only a step away.