Passages by 
Glen Schmucker, Pastor

 
The Secret of the Quiet Cemetery  

The grave was old and had almost been consumed by the great oak growing nearby. The cold rain and the north wind of many winters had worn the stone clean, all but blinding my eyes to its secrets. I brushed back the overgrown grass and traced the numbers out, Braille-like. Mother earth had embraced this man of dust in 1857, long ago also returning to nature the tears shed at his parting.

Standing up, I looked around this hill of rest overlooking a placid blue, tree-laced lake below. Sugar maples in full red and other ancient trees were turning loose their yellows and golds as the first winds of fall caressed their branches. I couldn’t help but wonder what all had passed on the winding road below in the fifteen decades since the preacher closed his Bible over the grave.

Everything that formed the substance of modern history had just passed on by and left the dead to rest. Surely some of the grief of the Civil War and every war since and the grief of the Great Depression had stopped by that cemetery looking for some energy of life on which to feast. All they could do, though, was move on down the road, looking for some other unsuspecting traveler. Someone who would unwittingly welcome them because they didn’t know the secret of the quiet cemetery. The secret that faith renders us nothing but corpses to those worries and fears looking for life on which to feast.