Building monuments

BUILDING MONUMENTS

 

During his lifetime Absalom had taken a pillar and erected it in
the King's Valley as a monument to himself . . . (2 Sam. 18:18 NIV).

 

A farmer in Kansas, a self-made man, amassed a considerable fortune, but in the process made few friends. His wife's family thought she had married beneath herself, so he was also bitter. When his wife died, he erected an elaborate statue in her memory. It portrayed his wife and him sitting on a love seat. Later, he had another statue made of himself kneeling at her grave. He commissioned still a third monument of his wife kneeling at his future grave.

 

By the time he was finished, he had spent a quarter of a million dollars on monuments. When someone from the town suggested that he help support a community project, the old miser frowned and shouted, "What's this town ever done for me?" When the man died, it is said that the only person at his funeral was the tombstone salesman! Today, those monuments are sinking slowly into the Kansas soil, sad reminders of a self-centered, unsympathetic life.

 

The best monuments we can erect are well-spent lives, memories of faith and love. Like Abel we, though dead, can speak (Heb. 11:4). Such monuments are built throughout a lifetime of service to others and devotion to God.

 

Life response: Am I spending more time building monuments than I am building friendships?