My Name in Granite

Some people have seen their name in lights.  I’ve seen my name in granite.

My father put all his children’s names and dates of births on his and Mom’s gravestone in the event that a family historian will one day want to track us down.  When my parents died over 20 years ago, cemetery-visiting seemed like the preferred way to do such research.  Today we have ancestry.com and more.

Seeing my name in granite has a Lenten feel in that I am reminded that “To Dust I Will Return.”  We are all going to die.

But seeing my name in granite while I’m still alive smacks of Missing the Point – cosmically – if we are followers of Jesus.  My life is not sealed in granite.

The world might believe that after making a single terrible choice (or a dozen terrible choices) we deserve our sad fate.  We might be pegged for all time by a world that wants to label us and place us in a tidy box.

But whatever we’ve done in the past, whatever has happened to us, whatever trauma has befallen us – our fate is not in fact sealed in granite.  There is always hope.  Maybe it’s too early to say this, but redemption is always possible.