Hid With Christ: Bath Clutter

Submitted by Alan Marsden on Sun, 27/11/2022 - 00:00

At Bath Abbey in Wiltshire, the walls and floors are literally lined with memorials to the rich. It is a who’s who of eighteenth and nineteenth-century rich folk from England’s south-west. Having the excess wealth to pay for funerary monuments and gravestones, they sought to have their names, titles and exploits preserved so future generations would not forget them. Most of them, of course, are still forgotten, their slabs now places where we rest our feet or arms after a half hour’s sight-seeing in the Abbey. Observing all this clutter, I gained the impression that the rich were trying their best to defeat death; their wealth could not stave off its icy touch, but they could circumvent being forgotten. Doubtless, many worthier folk lived in Bath during those centuries who could not, or would not, cross a mason’s palm with silver in order to have their names preserved in stone.

In scripture we read:

...and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. Exodus 2:24

Then God remembered Rachel... Genesis 30:22

Then God remembered Noah... Genesis 8:1

...that God remembered Abraham Genesis 19:29

I would far sooner be remembered by the great God of heaven and be forgotten by men, than the other way round. You may dump my corpse in pit and erase my name from the records, for

...you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3:3