Saturday, March 22, 2008

The greatest moment in history

Today is the anniversary of the day when, over 2000 years ago, Jesus ascended from the dead. I believe this as Christianity teaches it. The Bible teaches it. So the resurrection from the dead was made possible from that time onward. Death is not a condition which we enter into, it is a process that each human being passes through. It looks like a condition, because the body is the only hard evidence we have of a person's existence. And the body stays dead, to the hurt of those who mourn them. A minister at a funeral I went to years ago said: "We don't weep for the deceased, their troubles are over; but we weep for ourselves because we miss them."
Good thought! And it was not meant to be a reproach, even if some people might take it that way. It was pointing out that death is an end to suffering for the believer (not for the unbeliever, regretably) and the beginning of blessedness. But those of us still in the physical body miss the departed one. That's only human!
John Donne put it beautifully: "Then death shall be no more,
Death, thou shalt die."
When the resurrection comes shall be the death of death. It shall cease to exist!
Have a blessed Easter!

1 comment:

Laura said...

Mr. Clarke,

What you said is very true! What a wonderful time in our history! "Death, where is thy victory? Grave, where is thy sting?" Christ has been raised again, He's crushed the “serpent's” head, and now we can all be hopeful of the coming of our Lord and Savior, and the resurrection of our own bodies! Sometimes we as Christians don't think much about death-- or what brought it into this world! Many Christians don't see that death, as Paul said in Philippians, is gain.

Thanks also for the encouragement you left on my blog, www.PenInTheHand.blogspot.com. You encouraged me to keep up the work begun. To "put my hands to the plow" and not turn back.

Again, thanks for the encouragement!

~Laura Camp