The Forgotten

Ecclesiastes 9:5b-6: "The dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun."



One of my delights in life is touring historical sites and learning about the people who lived there in centuries past. Recently, I had the privilege of visiting an old city in eastern North Carolina; and as expected, I scheduled as many historical attractions into my weekend as I could muster.



One of my stops took me to a rather old cemetery that had in its yard the interred remains of several prominent people in the life of that city over the past two hundred years. As I walked through the cemetery, I enjoyed reading the epitaphs inscribed on the headstones of the dead; still, one crypt stood out to me for its magnificence. It seemed as if the person interred there wanted to impress the occasional stroller to walk over to his plot and pay homage. I mused at the crypt, that now was showing the signs of deterioration (broken brick and mortar, weeds, etc.).



Later that week, I purchased a historical book of that particular city, and as I began to read its contents, I noticed that the person whose name was on the crypt was mentioned in the book. Of course, this fascinated me, and I was determined to learn about this person. The historical book did not present a favorable opinion of the man. He was known as a shrewd politician of the mid-nineteenth century, who used his political position to profit personally. He, for example, used convicts of the state and slaves as free labor to work his expansive agricultural fields and his railroad company. This man was able to become quite wealthy by taking advantage of others; and with this wealth and political stature, he was able to assume a high level of influence in the community.



I guess the tragic irony of this story is found in this man's death. When he drew his last breath, everything that he had acquired (or rather usurped) was lost to him. No longer would he have the prestige and affluence that he had experienced in his life. Now, his memory was relegated to a few choice words in a historical book and a rapidly deteriorating (albeit impressive) crypt.



The writer of Ecclesiastes aptly recognizes this fate by saying that the dead "have no further reward and even the memory of them is forgotten." With hyperbolic sarcasm, the writer wants the reader to understand that the vain, temporal pursuits of this life are meaningless. If we are consumed with power, recognition, or wealth, we will find that our energies will be ill-spent.



An occasional stroll through a graveyard can be a good reminder to a follower of Jesus Christ that he need not scurry about with the world in the rat race to accumulate the vanities of life; rather he should be focused on cultivating his intimate relationship with Christ and follow Him obediently. It is to Christ that the believer's soul will return (see Ecclesiastes 12:7), and eternity will become his experiential reality. Once a man dies and is interred in the ground, his memory will fade not unlike the fading of the lettering inscribed on the headstones of the dead. All will be lost in this temporal world; thus, he should be motivated to prepare himself for his eternal dwelling with the Lord.

Rick Warren has said that "Christians should carry spiritual green cards to remind us that our citizenship is in heaven." If we have everything to gain in eternity and everything to lose here, it sounds like we should be motivated by what we will experience just over the horizon.