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Y’all…have you heard about this trend where folks leave behind their best known recipe on their tombstone when they die? Tiktok personality, “ghostlyarchive”, has traveled all over the country and taken pictures of gravestones where people have left behind their favorite or best known dishes. From fudge to meatloaf, breads to ice creams, cookies to cakes…this individual travels all over the place to see the recipe left behind on gravestones and then prepares the recipe in honor of the ones gone before us. While some may think this is odd, as a fat man who loves food, I think this is pretty cool. We all have family secret recipes that folks crave and talk about. Instead of those delicious items being lost forever, these folks are allowing the good memories and great foods to continue after they are dead and gone.

What recipe are you good at cooking? Is there a family secret recipe or item your mom, dad, grandma, aunts second cousins thrice removed was known for? Go ahead and email those recipes to me and let’s test it out (haha).

This idea got me thinking: What am I going to be remembered for? My Nanny’s AMAZING cobbler that is better than any other cobbler you’ve ever tried? My moms delicious stroganoff or fudge? My dads lemon chess pie? My wife’s cookies or poundcake that no one comes close to matching?

A couple weeks ago our church family enjoyed a prayer walk which ended with a station that asked these questions: What will be left of us when we have left? What traces will we leave? What will the surviving witnesses say? What impressions will we leave behind? Will the future be better because of what we did with our present?

In the Old Testament, memorials would be set up with stones or wells in order that when the next generation comes along and asks questions, the memories can come flooding back and we can tell of those before us and the journey they tread and the legacy they left behind. I pray more than anything I cook…I pray more than any devotion I write…I pray more than any joke I tell, people remember my love for Jesus Christ and their need for Him. I pray the prints I leave behind are ones of Gods goodness and our deep desire for Him as our Savior. I pray more than my love for ice cream and the truth I preach that ice cream doesn’t fill you up, it only fills in the cracks…I pray folks learn how Jesus Christ fills us completely. May my stone show the recipe of living in our loving God.

Rev. J. Cameron Bailey is pastor of Kenbridge Christian Church. He can be reached at jamescameronbailey@gmail.com.