Good morning, and welcome to the April 7th Musing.

“Well…this is an odd place for a cemetery.”

I had driven to a business lunch in an unfamiliar part of the city.   My less-than-direct GPS took me weaving among the retail and office buildings.   I turned a corner and there I saw it, fenced in, nestled in, among the buildings…a cemetery.

I have been interested in cemeteries for most of my life.  Growing up in a multigenerational funeral directing family in rural Kansas, I spent a good deal of my youth helping in and around our funeral home and also in local graveyards. 

Now for many, a cemetery Is not a favored place.   And for a number of years, it was not mine.  But after coming to faith in Christ in my late teens, my fear of death was replaced by a love for the One who overcame the grave.  Indeed ,“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”* rang true for me.

Yes, the eeriness of a cemetery had lost its hold.  The image of the cemetery as a place “for the haunted” was replaced with the reality, as one author put it, “…the graveyards of man become the seed plots of resurrection. And the cemeteries of the people of God become, through the heavenly dew, the resurrection fields of the promised perfection.”

Good Friday, when Jesus was laid in the tomb.    Easter Sunday, when the Resurrection of Resurrections commenced, Christ’s being the basis and pathway for our own.

The cemetery before me, was there long before the buildings were.    And my meeting with it was a timely reminder of the hope of resurrection for me and all who hope in Christ.

Perhaps this isn’t an odd place for a cemetery after all.

Rod

S.D.G. – 8

*1 Corinthians 15:55 (NASB95)

“Seed plot” quote from author Erich Sauer.