Getting In The Last Word

I love roaming through cemeteries.  To me the grave markers are “short stories” about the people whose final resting place they honor and memorialize.  Their grave markers provided the opportunity for the person resting there (or their loved ones) to share with the world one final thought that summarized their lives or their hope for their future after death.

I was recently in Philadelphia with Teryl while she was at a conference.  I went to see Christ Church, the church that George Washington and Ben Franklin attended.  Ben   Franklin is buried in the church’s cemetery.  For such a famous person, his grave marker was very simple—just noting his name and the date of his birth and death as well as that of his wife who was buried with himn.  But what fascinated me the most was what a plaque next to the marker said: 

“The Body of B Franklin, Printer.

Like the cover of an old book,

It’s contents torn out,

And stript of its Lettering and Gilding,

Lies here.  Food for worms. 

But the Work shall not be lost. 

For it will as he believ’d

appear once more

In a new and more elegant

Edition Corrected and improved

By the Author.”

What a great epitaph to put on a grave marker!  What a great way to look at our bodies as they are buried and what they will be like in the resurrection!  We will still be human, we will still look like ourselves, but we will be so much better because we will be perfect.  Unfortunately there was a disclaimer on the plaque concerning this epitaph.  Franklin wrote this when he was younger as a “mock” epitaph and was not intended to be used—and obviously it wasn’t.  How sad.  I don’t know if Franklin was a true Christian or not, but what a great statement of Christian faith and hope the words on that plaque would have conveyed if they had been put on his marker.

A little further along in the cemetery was the grave of Benjamin Gumbes.  His marker is worn and sort of difficult to read because of time and the elements wearing away the script on the granite, but two things are very readable:  He “bore his life with Christian Fortitude” and he “breathed his last with the fullest intent of a joyful immortality”.  He only lived 32 years—not very young by our estimation.  But if his marker is accurate, he had a great faith and trust that while his years in this world were short, he had all of eternity to live in the joy of resurrected holiness, righteousness, and perfeftion.  He and his family wanted to convey that hope to all who might possibly walk past his grave.  At the time they probably had no idea that those words would still inspire and speak to people nearly 230 years later.

We probably never stop to think how powerful our final words could be because we don’t stop to think that our final words are not words that are spoken by us on our death bed, but words that we would have written on our grave markers.  Hebrews 12:1 is right:  we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses.  So what will our final witness to the world be?

AE