Cemetery

 Cemeteries can be fascinating places. The monuments and tomb stones bear record to generations who inhabited the spaces we now inhabit, walked the same streets, climbed the same hills, breathed the same air.  I once walked through the cemetery with my father-in-law and listened as he told stories about his friends and family who were buried there.  My wife and I now visit his grave and her mother’s buried side-by-side in that same cemetery.

 Some years ago, I attended a conference in Boston and stayed at the historic Omni Parker House Hotel.  With a bit of free time on my hands, I ventured outside, crossed Tremont Street and wandered into the Granary Burial Grounds, the third oldest cemetery in Boston established in 1660.  Some of America’s founding fathers are buried here: Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, John Hancock and five victims of the Boston massacre along with Benjamin Franklin’s parents.

 As I wandered among the grave markers I was struck by the contrast.  Those gravestones that were erected in the late 1600s bore images of skulls and cross bones. They appeared stark and painful.  But in the early 1700s something changed. The images were replaced with angels and cherubim along with Scripture quotations. They radiated hope and expectations for heaven.

 I wondered what happened to cause the change.  Why were those buried in the late 1600s interred beneath morbid markers while those who died in the 1730s and later had gravestones symbolizing hope of heaven?  The only explanation seemed to be the Great Awakening.

 The earliest beginnings of the Great Awakening can be traced to Gilbert Tennent who founded a “Log College” In Pennsylvania in 1727 to train Presbyterian preachers.  The “Log College” was later named “Princeton.”  The awakening took wings in the 1730s on the preaching of John and Charles Wesley, the founders of Methodism, and George Whitefield, whose sermons were widely published by his friend, Benjamin Franklin. The Great Awakening changed the spiritual fabric of the Colonies and transformed the way people viewed death.  Death released its grim grip of despair and was replace by the hope of heaven through faith in Jesus Christ.

 Every generation must face its own mortality.  As we age, we must say goodbye to parents, fiends, brothers and sisters. Every generation must find its own faith.  As someone said, God has no grandchildren. We must experience our own spiritual awakening that connects us to the most important event in human history.  As was written 2,000 years ago, “But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. … O death where is your victory?  O death where is your sting?  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:20, 55-57).  

Bill Tinsley's book of poems, People Places and Things is FREE February 25-27 on Amazon Kindle.