Improving Your Epitaph!

How do you feel about cemeteries? In our death-denying society, most people don’t like them. I have no desire or plan to take permanent residence in one any time soon, but I confess I enjoy an occasional visit to what we used to widely be called a “graveyard” (now, in these more death-denying times called “burial parks” or “memorial gardens”). I like reading the epitaphs on the grave markers / headstones. They range from the silly to the sublime. You can easily get on-line and find many of them. The New York Times printed one on a gravestone in Tennessee – “He was a simple man who died of complications.” In Chattanooga was this one – “I came into this world without my consent and left in the same manner."

And a dentist’s epitaph in Edinburgh, Scotland, said this: “Stranger, tread this ground with gravity. Dentist Brown is filling his last cavity.” I read about one somewhere that said, “Here lies Les Moore. Four slugs from a 44. No Les, no more.” Serious ones say things like, “Beloved husband and father.” Or, “Forever missed.” Or, “She changed our lives for the better,” etc.

An epitaph is “a brief statement commemorating, epitomizing, or giving a final judgment on a deceased person’s life, often inscribed on a tombstone or grave-marker.” If you were brutally honest and wrote your own epitaph, how would it read? The apostle Paul wrote an epitaph of sorts about himself in 2 Timothy 4:6-8. He anticipated he was near the end of his earthly life as he approached the conclusion of his letter to his younger preacher friend Timothy. He sought to prop Timothy up with courage so that the younger evangelist would not wimp out but fulfill his own ministry for Christ. With not an ounce of fear or doubt, Paul, the old solider of the cross, confidently wrote, “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.” As Paul contemplated his approaching death, he thought back over several decades of costly but faithful consecration to Christ and the Lord’s church. And he summed it all up this way – “I fought . . . I finished . . . I kept” – immortal words quoted for centuries in obituaries and funeral sermons to eulogize faithful and dedicated saints. Nobody who studies Paul’s life in the New Testament would dare accuse him of being presumptuous or arrogant in his self- written epitaph. He could write that he “fought . . . finished . . . and kept” – because he fought the good fight, he finished the race, and he kept the faith!

How about you? If you wrote your own epitaph and told the truth, how would it read? Like Dorcas (Tabitha) – “full of good works” (Acts 9:36)? Or Abraham – “the friend of God” (James 2:23)? Or Enoch – “He walked with God” (Genesis 5:24)?. Or Phoebe – “a servant of the church . . . a helper of many” (Romans 16:1-2)? Or, if you were honest, would it read like Judas – “Judas, which betrayed Him” (Matthew 26:25)? Or Demas – “Demas, has forsaken . . . having loved this present world” (2 Timothy 4:10)? We write our epitaphs each day by what we do and what we say. Do you need to improve your epitaph? Think about it.

Dan Gulley