I was recently at the New Era cemetery placing a swag on my parents’ gravesite. I marvel that a life can be symbolized by a mere dash placed between eight numbers. The day I visited was a special one because it marked the day my father was born 112 years earlier. His birthday is December 29, 1913, and he passed away in 1996.
My mother was inconsolable. After 60 years of marriage, Henry and Ellen’s lives were so closely intertwined that it felt as though part of her had been torn away.
Ellen lived another seven years after Henry died, but from the moment God “tapped him on the shoulder,” she longed to be with him and her Lord in Heaven.
Henry’s death was another defining moment in a series of situations that brought Ellen to a crossroads, where she was forced to choose between faith and doubt, acceptance and resignation, love and fear and obedience to God’s will or pursuing her own.
As usual, she took her grief and pain to her Lord in prayer. Henry's health had been deteriorating and she couldn’t wish him back. She was thankful that Henry had preceded her in death and that he had died peacefully at home on his beloved farm (present-day Country Dairy). Even though he’d lived there for 87 years, the house on the hill was a mere tent compared to his eternal abode.
Henry was remembered as hard-working, honest and humble. Early photos reveal a handsome, dark-haired, dashing figure, whom folks compared to Billy Graham. He may have been “simply” a farmer, but he was an avid reader and memorized passages of scripture and poetry, including his favorite, "Snow-Bound" by John Greenleaf Whittier. He studied the stars with his telescope and knew the constellations by name. He was a walking Farmer’s Almanac, predicting the weather by studying the sky and cloud formations. He knew birds by their colors and calls.
While Ellen hankered to travel, Henry was most content at home. Winter evenings found him reading in his recliner, and on summer evenings, he and Ellen sat on the front porch listening to a symphony of croaking frogs, chirping crickets, hooting owls and the raspy clicking of katydids. He rose with the sun and, at day’s end, watched it set over the western hills. He was a devoted husband, father and grandfather. Though he worshipped God within the four walls of a church, he communed with his Creator every day in the great outdoors. He witnessed to his faith as a church leader, a member and speaker for Gideons International and through hymn duets with Ellen, blending his mellow tenor voice with hers. His Lord and Savior had become his Friend.
I mused that Christmas was a perfect time to visit a cemetery. Instead of whistling our way through the gravestones, as though it were a place of dread and gloom, one can find consolation and inspiration here, especially in the afterglow of Christ’s birth, at Christmas, and the Magi’s journey following the star, during Epiphany, symbolizing Christ as the Light of the World.
The stark truth of Christmas is that Jesus was born to die; however, His resurrection, after three days in the tomb, transformed death into an Easter message - a testimony that death has been conquered, the grave defeated and Satan crushed. Save for our grief at missing those who’ve died, a cemetery need not be depressing.
There’s another message here. I, too, will lie in the ground one day. Am I growing closer to Jesus so that when God taps me on the shoulder, I will be ready. I threw up a prayer: “Dear Jesus, may I dwell with you in daily experience here on earth, so that I will be accustomed to the glory of heaven, when I shall dwell with You.”
Musing that a regular stroll through a cemetery might be beneficial both physically and spiritually. I made it one of my New Year’s resolutions.
“Come, sweet death,
come blessed rest!
Come, lead me to peace
It is better in heaven,
for there is all pleasure greater,
therefore I am at all times
prepared to say "Farewell,"*
(- hymn by J.S. Bach)
