How will you be remembered when you die?
I want you to go with me in your minds to the small town of Higginsville, Missouri. There is a
cemetery that is just on the edge of town and as we walk through it, we notice something strange. While most of the gravestones are facing east to west due to the tradition of burying Christians that way, there is one that is facing north to south. We walk over and look to find the reason why it is like that. We read what it says, “W B Holden, Here lies a sinner”. Now I don’t know what type of a man he was or what kind of a life he lived, but I do know how he will be remembered. In the very same year that he was born, 1860, there was a certain man that died in that town.
We get in the car and drive down a windy highway road even further out of the same town. We
come to a cemetery that is no longer in use and hasn’t been for awhile. We walk through and find a scroll shaped gravestone. It is difficult to read, but we are able to make out the words and it says, “Allen Wright, preacher of the original Gospel, fell asleep in Jesus, July 19, 1860”. While I could not find much on the life Mr Holden lived, much can be found on Allen Wright. He was a restoration preacher in that area and did great things.
These are two completely different gravestones. What will our gravestones say about us? How
will people remember us when we die? In reality, that doesn’t matter. I think of the words of
Hugh M’Kail (1666) “Although I be judged and condemned as a rebel among men, yet I hope,
even in order to this action, to be accepted as loyal before God”. That is what matters, how we
are seen in the eyes of God. That depends on how we live because we will be judged for what we do in our bodies, 2 Cor 5:10. Can it be said at the end of our lives that we are the friend of God (Abraham, James 2:23) , or a son of God (1 John 3:1) , or, as was seen with Mr Wright, a
preacher, teacher, or one who lived the original Gospel?
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