The Message in the Gravestones

​It’s time to break out the holiday decorations! In our family, we have some drastic variances in house rules regarding when the Christmas decorations can be put up. Both sets of our parents have a healthy method of modest decorating a few weeks out. One of our daughters is inching the line back in her own home, and has most recently declared November 1 as the day. Our other daughter decorates her family’s home when the creative mood strikes, sometimes earlier and sometimes later in the season. My own home has always maintained the line that anything and everything Christmas can go up the moment the Thanksgiving dishes are all put away. To be fair, this rule was agreed upon years ago when my husband realized that, so great is my enthusiasm for the celebration of Christ’s birth, I might never take the Christmas decorations down or put the Nat King Cole Christmas album away without some boundaries in place. 

But have you noticed the new decorating passion that some people have for Halloween? In our town, the stores are filled with ghosts and skeletons and gravestones throughout October. Rather than the red and green of Christmas, we now have the orange and purple of Halloween. One friend said her little girls wondered what in the world the huge scary monster on display at the store was for, and I’m sure that would be alarming to small kids. The circles I have run with the last thirty years are more the fall festival crowd, and I personally much prefer that to Count Dracula or Freddy Krueger. Plus, I need to give an honest and heart-felt disclaimer that I believe the witchcraft and dark spiritual themes aren’t wise for anyone to explore. However, with all that said, I am currently rethinking my opinion on this fall celebration in our culture. 

If you look back in the blog archives, you will see that I almost always post something about All Saints’ Day at this time of year, which is what we are technically celebrating with All Hallows’ Eve. I have been working a personal campaign to redirect attention back to this important Church holy day, which reminds us that we’re part of something so much bigger than ourselves and our own time, namely God’s own story. But an article I read recently gave me a lot to think about. The author, a Catholic Christian, posed the provocative idea that there is nothing better to begin the autumnal and winter season of holy days than a definitive reminder of our own mortality. In this age of defying age, it is healthy to remember that we are all going to face death. One day, a gravestone emblazoned RIP is going to have my name on it, and another yours. No matter how well any of us eat, or how often we exercise, or how carefully we follow safety and morality rules, not one of us is going to be able to cheat death. 

Years ago, a graveyard beside the local church served as a constant reminder of the certainty of death to everyone who entered or passed by the church grounds. Grandmother and grandfather were not gone forever, they had just graduated to real life in Heaven with God, and the stones commemorating their lives were an ever-present reminder to their families that everything said inside the church and in the Bible was true. Of course, now the culture has changed so dramatically that few church buildings have attached cemeteries. Other changes are even more drastic; so few live in the same place their entire lives, and even fewer live in the same place as their families. There is so little continuity and steadiness in our lives and communities. We drive a good distance to gather with other believers, or meet online, or (much more likely) do not have any affiliation with a Christian gathering at all. 

Further, we have become a culture absolutely in denial of aging and death. We have innumerable anti-aging products to chose from at the store, we have plastic surgery to disguise the effects of aging, and we have a booming pharmaceutical industry to stave off disease. As a society, we color our hair and whiten our teeth and filter our photographs to look younger. Once on a trip to Istanbul, we wondered what new cult had begun that required the male adherents to shave and paint their heads with that strange red design, only to realize that men from all over the world had traveled there to receive hair implants! Further, the new frontier of artificial intelligence is terrifying on so many levels, to me the most so in the idea that people are really trying to beat “the system” and find a way for humans to live forever. But the recent pandemic scare revealed how flimsy our confidence in these defenses; deep down, we all know that death is coming. 

The honest question is, what comes next? 

For so many, the answer to this is unclear. Many believe that this world is all there is, and that totally informs the idea and practice that every person should get anything and everything they can out of life, no matter what it costs themselves or anyone else. This actually makes sense if this life is all there is, and if God is not real. But as Christians, we know that God is real, and that this life is not all there is; we know there are two choices of Heaven forever with God or Hell forever without Him. 

So what a wonderful reminder are those yards filled with ghosts and skeletons and gravestones! Rather than a threat to our faith, these could be seen as an opportunity. I’m not saying that everyone needs to put those decorations out, but I do think that many more of us could harness the culture’s own expression, and bring the conversation around to mortality, eternity, and the Good News of Jesus with our families, friends, and neighbors. That beautiful passage in the book of Hebrews paints a clear picture:

”Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgement, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him.”

Each of us who already believes on Christ can use this season as one of personal preparation and examination…

- am I living only for myself, or am I mindful of God and others?

- am I living just for now, or am I mindful that every word I speak (and type), every thought I think, every investment of time or money I make impacts the eternities of myself and others? 

-are my decisions based on what is Biblically sound, or rather on what feels right in the moment? 

-does my faith in Christ rise and fall with my comfort, health, and prosperity? 

-am I afraid of aging and death, or am I allowing God to build my confidence in His grace for that day? 

May the Lord bless you today as you think about these things. Enjoy the night and the season. And may your heart be filled with grace and courage to know that not only is it officially the most wonderful time of the year, but that Emmanuel is coming again!