Christmas Eve At The Cemetery

Merry Christmas!

First, I can’t resist one more cartoon from Reverend Fun:

Sometimes I don’t understand why I do the things I do.

Among my other activities on Christmas Eve I drove out to the cemetery where my mother, father and grandmother are buried to tend their graves.

This is my practice every Christmas Eve but I don’t know why I do it.

There is no physical need. the gravediggers maintain the cemetery without fault. Nevertheless, I carry out a rake, trimmer and broom to spruce up the graves.

There is no spiritual need. It is appointed unto man once to die and after that, the judgment. Once people go where they go, they’re there. When Christ returns for us, those already dead will leap to meet Him, and if we’re still living we’ll join the throng. So, I’m convinced that whether our bodies lie in a beautiful cemetery, or in a mass pit, or have been lost at sea and eaten by sharks, or burned in a crash – The God who called all molecules together in the first place is perfectly able to reassemble them.

Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.

For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself. And hath given him authority to execute judgment also. Because he is the Son of man.

Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation”.

So even though I feel there is no need to pray for the dead, in actuality, I do it.

Doesn’t everybody?

Neither, do I feel there’s any need to talk to the dead – although, in actuality, I do that too. I sit by my parents’ grave smoking my pipe and telling them a bit of what’s been going on in my life. There’s no need for this. The Scripture hints that the dead are aware of what’s going on among the living; they are in that great cloud of witnesses, sitting on the 50-yard line cheering for us to make it. I believe this, but I sort of mentally talk to my parents at the graveside.

So, if there’s no physical need, and no spiritual need for me to visit these graves each Christmas Eve, then I wonder why I do it?

I’m not aware of any emotional need within my self for this practice. I did what I could for my parents while they lived. All said and done, we parted on good terms. I don’t particularly miss them or anything like that. So I wonder why I practice visiting their graves each Christmas Eve.

And I can’t come up with an answer.

It’s one of those things -- like so much in my life -- that I do because I do it.