More than a Memory

To greet you today with a “happy” Memorial Day seems a bit contradictory, don’t you think?

When I was a child my family attended a church called “Memorial Baptist.” Although I didn’t question it at the time, as I reflect on it now, I realize what an odd name it was for the church of the Living God. On Memorial Day we remember men and women who have died in the service of our country. In a way, they died for us! Maybe that’s what the founders of the Memorial Baptist Church were thinking.

A memorial is also an object which serves as a focus for memory of a person who has died—a gravestone or plaque or a cross. But a church as a memorial doesn't set right with me, as though it were a big tomb!  I do realize, however, the Lord’s Supper is a memorial ("this do in remembrance of me”).  Jesus wanted us to remember He died for us.

Well, I’m not going to be able to resolve this paradox today. But this one thing I know.  Unlike the fallen heroes and man-made gods of this world, of whom there is nothing left but a memory, “our hope [on this day of memories] is in the Living God” (1 Tim. 4:10).

How will our story read?

Last year I attended a memorial service for the wife of a friend. Since I didn’t know her very well, I paid close attention to what people said about her. In all, probably a dozen people took the ‘mic’ and shared how her life impacted them. I had met her once and knew her to be a Christian, but, surprisingly, no one spoke about the impact of her spiritual life. I hope it was just an awful omission. But it did make me think: ‘what would people say about me?’ And would some tell a different story than others?

If “it is no longer I who live, but Christ is living in me” (Gal. 2:20), then shouldn’t my life story be more about Jesus than me, about how His life impacted others through me? If I am being conformed to the image of Jesus (Rom. 8:29), shouldn’t my character be indistinguishable from His?

As if eulogizing the Corinthians, Paul said “you are living letters… written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God” (2 Cor. 3:2). When I wrote my father’s eulogy last year, I chose to focus on the impact of his spiritual life on his family and friends. To me, that’s the ‘real’ story.

Again, I must ask myself ‘how will my story read?’ One thing for sure is that I want my family and friends to tell the ‘same’ story—that is, I hate to think that I made a positive impact with some and a negative one with others. Thank God, I’m not finished yet. There is still time to write my story.