Looking for the Living One Among the Dead

The day I found the battered old cemetery
I was feeling pretty battered and old myself.
It was a gray, rainy day and I had a gray, overcast soul.

I was drawn to the deceased.-

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like tombs that have been whitewashed, which look beautiful on the outside but inside are full of dead men's bones and everything impure."

- Matthew 23:27

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Jesus had some strong words relating to tombstones.

Most of us have met some, and often have been like, whitewashed tombstones.

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Tombstones used to be full of expression and meaning.

We've dropped that practice in recent years.

Today's stones just relate the facts.

Black and white, simple facts.

Your name goes here.

Your birth and death go here.

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"a finer bud of promise never bloomed"

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"Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal."

"May thy soul find rest in God's bossom."

"We shall meet again dear father and mother

in a brighter clime than this,

where the anguish of this world of ours

is lost in deathless bliss."

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Can you imagine putting the time and expense into carving all that on a tombstone?

Words today are perishable.

The written word is everywhere, it's shelf-life is amazingly short.

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"rest, mother,
rest in quiet sleep..."
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I once spent two hours crying in a cemetery. A dear, sweet sister reminded me of that recently. I had been crying in the cemetery for hours, reading the Psalms, trying to find comfort.
You know what I found?

I found my sweet Savior whom I had taken my eyes off in the darkness of my grief. Sitting among the tears, the decay, and the life-giving Holy Scriptures, I was reminded of the passage in Luke where the angels comforted the grieving ladies with these gentle, loving, encouraging, motivational words:

"Why do you look for the living among the dead?"
Luke 24:5

Read more here.