The thing about an epitaph is that it is ultimately a kind of judgment—a short summation of the life of a person.  And whether we have a headstone or not, we’ll all have an epitaph written for us one way or the other. Hebrews puts it bluntly: “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.”

But I asked yesterday, whose judgment matters?  Whose inscription of our life carries the day, whether it makes its way onto our headstone or not?  Is it our own? That of our family and friends?  The general public?  Jefferson’s example teaches us how little it ultimately depends on us, even when we write the inscription ourselves; Mark Antony’s oration for Caesar reminds us that the judgments of other men are frankly no better than our own.  So where does that leave us?

Paul’s letter to the Romans offers a pretty clear answer:

“For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written, ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.’ So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.”

We give the account; but God writes our epitaph.  How then shall we live?

The epitaph at an anonymous grave of a Puritan from the 17th century in Connecticut says it well:

“Death is a debt to nature due,

Which I have paid, and so must you;

God grant that you prepared may be,

When death shall come and summon thee.”

That “you and I prepared may be,” as Dietrich Bonhoeffer was, the German martyr executed by the Nazi’s for opposing Hitler, whose last recorded words were:

“This is the end—for me the beginning of life.”

Will that be my epitaph?  Will it be yours?

Have a wonderful day.