I have started collecting epitaphs on gravestones. I suppose it really started when I was a child wandering through the local cemetery with my older sister. We found quite a bit of Scope for the Imagination as we gazed upon statues and read the carefully chosen words on the stones. One said mysteriously "An enemy hath done this," which set our minds reeling with possibilities. Was he murdered? Was it during the war? Was betrayal involved? It wasn't until I was an adult and starting to read the Bible that I came across that very phrase in Matthew 13, referring to the parable in which an enemy had sown tares among the wheat. This sheds no light on the matter for me; does it for you?
Moving on, I call your attention to a gravestone I came across recently in a small cemetery in Idaho. "Mother - there will be no shadows on the other shore." C.S. Lewis famously referred to life on this side of heaven as the "Shadowlands," a place where we see only shadows of the things to come. Life isn't completely crystallized and solid here; we are only shadows. On the other shore we will be complete and real and solid in Christ.
In literature when a shadow seems to fall across someone's face, it is a symbol of grief or sadness. Evil lurks in shadows and waits for nightfall to do its dirty work. On the other shore we will be free from all sadness and evil.
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| Mother - There will be no shadows on the other shore |
Lay down your sweet and weary head
Night is falling, you've come to journey's end
Sleep now and dream of the ones who came before
They are calling from across the distant shore...
...White shores are calling...you and I will meet again.
For all who are in Christ, we will meet again on the other shore. Death is the final shadow and after that comes light and substance and unending joy.
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes;
there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying.
There shall be no more pain,
for the former things have passed away.
Revelation 21:4
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