Gone But Not Forgotten

 

The old country cemetery had its share of aged markers. In the deep woods of East Texas, the tall pine trees were like cathedral pillars over and inside this hallowed place.   The wind moaned as it blew through them, giving the sense  sound of a  soothing yet faraway, other-worldly place.   The names of the lives laid there under those pines left no trace of the wonders, the trials, the failures, heartaches, and success these buried souls may have had. Now they lay here beneath the moaning pines taking their secrets into the loamy soil with them. 

Who did they love? Who loved them? Now they are so silent yet once the passion of life coursed through their veins. Did it matter? Did they matter in the grand scheme of things?   Will I matter?

Off to the side and in the back of the old cemetery was a section grown up in weeds. I wondered if that was a section where they buried black persons. To my surprise, one day, I was told that blacks and whites were once buried in separate areas. In fact, one small town I knew of had two cemeteries:  one for whites and one for blacks. I was appalled at the senseless ignorance we lived under in those times. But,  I only suspect but was not sure if this was the black section of the cemetery of not. 

I was intrigued by how  unkempt and somewhat primitive this section of the cemetery was. Some of the headstones were just rocks with something chiseled on them. The weeds were chest high in some places. Up ahead, I could see a large mound and went to see why there would be a large mound in the cemetery.  It was more than just a mound.   Out there in the tall weeds was one of the biggest fire ant mounds I have ever seen. Something was in it with a point sticking out of the top of the fire ant mound. It was a tombstone with a pointed top. It was obviously a  tall marker that it had fallen over, and the fire ants had built their mound under, around,  and over that marker. 

Walking around the mound, I determined that the marker had fallen face first. For some reason I wanted to see what the face down inscription read. Leaning far over the mound, I grabbed the small portion of the top, showing from the dirt. As I pulled back on it. It didn’t budge at first, but the fire ants came boiling out of mound.  Eventually, the monument  moved, and I pulled it then harder as the fire ants came out by the thousands to the moving monument.   This had to be done quickly.   Finally, over it came, exposing the inscription side of the stone that had obviously been a fire ant roof for some time. In fact, that part of the was a darker color, I suppose from not being exposed to the sun. The inscription was there behind the remains of dirt and the hordes of fire ants. There, in the back of this desolate graveyard obscured among the high weeds in the middle of nowhere, the promise written in stone to the deceased read: 

“Gone But Not Forgotten.”

 It was false, and it was true. Somewhere, the promise givers have markers of their own now. Their promise will forever remain unfulfilled. But God’s promise won’t. Though we be absent in the body, we are present with the Father, for now, and evermore.

 

“For we know the if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

II Corinthians 5:1