I wrote yesterday about words, and I used the words written on a tombstone as evidence of a life lived in the right way. Even in the face of the severest trial of life, death, a woman had shown her faith by the way she had borne herself in front of those who knew her, and the words written about her gave a testimony of her Christian faith; in fact, her faith, in this instance, was her work.
This epitaph read: "The last privilege vouchsafed for her on earth was that of teaching her husband and children how a Christian ought to die".
One sentence in the reading for today from Matthew 8, as translated in The Message:
"Your cleansed and grateful life, not your words, will bear witness to what I have done."
The man Jesus was speaking to had come begging to be healed of his leprosy, showing his faith by his act of presenting himself to The Master in this way. Now he is instructed to again show himself to someone, in this case the priest, to bear witness to what had happened in his life.
I have said many times before, that it is much easier to sit in the quiet of the morning and write about what speaks to me in a particular Scripture, than it is to live out these words in the crucible of daily life.
The leper's life dramatically showed what had happened to him, what about mine?
Cleansed and grateful.
What a magnificent epitaph!
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