Wes,

Your question brought to mind a post from long ago.

(BTW, my point in that post was not to belittle grave marker remembrances of how the Lord has used individuals, for the sake of the living; rather it was the fact that those I was with seemed to think of themselves primarily in terms of their deeds and not the Lord's grace).

I also agree with you about the need for reminders of our mortality, without which the glories of the resurrection begin to seem irrelevant. One of the prices of worshiping in a rented school-building (or other facility) in a city where no new real estate for the dead can be found, is losing the ability to gaze out the window at "the churchyard" and getting a sense of the great cloud of witnesses. I don't think our school board would look kindly upon headstones in the playground; maybe we could arrange long-term rental of some of the hall lockers?

In all seriousness, it was following a Sunday-afternoon outing to a public cemetery (both George M. Cohan and Bat Masterson are buried there, go figure!) that daughter Amanda, 2 and a half years old, started asking deep questions about life, death, heaven, hell. She publicly called on the Lord that day for salvation, and has not turned back since--she just turned 20. sDg

In Christ,
Paul S