What do you want on your Tombstone?

 Read Genesis 5.

It is common practice to inscribe on burial headstones the person's name, dates, and, perhaps, a few words of remembrance.  The question we should be asking is: How do we want to be remembered when we are gone? 

Genesis 5 records the genealogy from Adam to Noah.  Immediately, the reader's attention is captured by the incredibly long life of each one.  How was it possible that humans were able to live for centuries?  "Both the biblical record and the Sumerian King List from Mesopotamia attest to the longevity of the ancient people.  Apparently the environment before the Flood enabled people to live longer." (The Bible Knowledge Commentary, p.35)   

Twice, in v. 22 and in v.25, we read the words, "Enoch walked with God."  In other words, this man lived in a way that pleased God and that is how he is remembered in perpetuity.  We do not know anything about his work, his accomplishments, his physical attributes, his personality, his social skills, his financial net worth, his possessions, or what he left in his estate.  Evidently, nothing else was worth mentioning because he left it all behind.  His relationship with God remains eternal to this day. 

Jude 14-15 records that he was somewhat of a prophet and preached the coming judgment on those who reject God.  In Hebrews 11, where Enoch's name appears again in the Bible, the epitaph is simply that he "walked with God."  

There is a vast, eternal difference is "making a living" and living for God. 

The French monarch, King Louis XIV, called himself "the Great".  But when he died in 1715, Bishop Massillon officiated the funeral.  It is reported that he snuffed out the candle and declared, "Only God is great." 

Song writer C.T. Studd put it this way:

"Only one life, twill soon be past.

Only what's done for Christ will last."