Grave Facts i: Name & Date

The Lancashire village of Rufford has a rather smart Victorian church built of red brick. In its churchyard, however, are older graves, including some straight-talking, matter-of-fact, later seventeenth-century examples, which just offer a name and a year. Later ones, especially Victorian, offer poems and biographical details, but the older type offer no such recollections to the general public.

Somewhere, a stone bears your name and date of expiry. Upon it will be no flannel, flattery or fawning. Just a name and date, neither of which you were able to choose. I am so glad that we are a people with a hope and a future, that a cold slab of granite will not have the final say or last word. Jesus' resurection means that the grave cannot hold us or contain us, for one day, we shall live again with our remade bodies in the new creation. 

For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks? Psalm 6:5

What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave? Selah. Psalm 89:48

I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction. Hosea 13:14a