Hope

‘As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;

when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.’ - Psalm 17:15

I find graveyards intensely interesting. There, I’ve got that off my chest.

Not for morbid reasons, I hasten to add. It’s just that epitaphs reveal so much about human hopes and values. We can find everything there - from maudlin sentiment to solid faith, and everything in between. It’s not often we find humour, though of course the grave of my favourite comedian, Spike Milligan, bears the words, ‘I told you I was ill.’ The man was a genius.

In the graveyard of St Thomas’s church here in Golborne, there is a headstone that reads, ‘In affectionate remembrance of William Stockley who died 7th November 1874 aged 26 years. Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.’

Why were these words from Proverbs 27:1 inscribed on William Stockley’s grave? He died young, even by the standards of the late 19th century - so was someone warning us not to live as William Stockley did, not to make the same mistakes he made? If so, we may wonder, what did he get up to?

Or is it William Stockley himself exhorting us not to presume upon tomorrow, as a man who had learnt while young to live wisely, and wanted to encourage others to do likewise?

We shall never know.

Those who get to choose what is inscribed on their gravestones give us a window into their soul. These will be their parting words to the world as it marches on without them.

For my part, I can think of no better words than the text before us today, from the pen of David, the sweet psalmist of Israel: ‘As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.’

Earlier in the psalm he has spoken of his enemies who oppose him, ‘men of the world whose portion is in this life’. Men ‘who leave their abundance to their infants’. Big fat family trusts are nothing new. In today’s news there is a story about such a man as this, who drapes himself across his luxury yacht in the south of France, insulated by his personal fortune from his failing business empire and seemingly indifferent to the consequences for those who shall suffer from it. The same thing happens on a smaller scale all over the world.

King David, however, marches to a different drumbeat. The first three words say just that: ‘As for me...’

The believer’s perspective is completely different to ‘the men of the world’. We must learn to say, ‘As for me’. Joshua did just that: ‘…as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord’ (Jos 24:15).

Our verse does what we often find in the Psalms: it says much the same thing twice, but in slightly different ways. Just as you may profitably view the same beautiful landscape from two different perspectives, the psalmist views his future hope in two similar but distinctive ways.

The essence of his hope is the presence of God. This is one of the big over-arching themes of the Bible story. That story begins with the Spirit of God ‘hovering over the face of the waters’ and the Lord God present in Eden, ‘walking in the garden in the cool of the day’. And it ends, in the words of Revelation 21:3, with the presence of God: ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.’

So both lines of this text are to do with the presence of God, but each has a slightly different emphasis. It’s worth thinking through what those two different perspectives are. Can I encourage you this week to reflect on these 2 lines?

Your face, your likeness.

I shall behold, I shall be satisfied.

When I awake - is that on Monday, or is it on a greater day?

Or is it both?