Grave Circumstances
Some friends and I were asked to serve as pallbearers for a graveside memorial. It was as if the weather took a cue from the circumstance and became damp, dark and grim. We were all unaware that the thunderous torrent had caused some erosion around the already fragile graveside. As we placed the casket on the device designed to lower it down into the earth, the ground caved and one of my fellow carriers of the casket involuntarily started to slide in. Someone grabbed his arm and saved him from being six feet under. After a gasp of breath we all managed a slight smile, knowing we had just witnessed a “close call.”
Situations like this remind us God must have a sense of humor. In the middle of grief He has a way of giving us a glimpse of gladness. “Grave circumstances” often produce a reason to rejoice!
Most of us have experienced the loss of a loved one and know the significance of standing at an open grave with a casket suspended above it bearing the remains of a beloved family member. The memory of walking past or placing a flower on the elevated casket or thrown a handful of dirt after the casket has been lowered is never forgotten. We all know the significant change a grave makes in our lives.
After death, those that remain often find a visit to the grave brings comfort. For some, it gives meaning and perspective to the life we are left to live. For others, the grave is a terrible reminder of a painful loss and not a pleasant place to visit.
It looks like a grave, but it’s a place to plant a seed
A great place to bury things but a better place to build things
It looks like the end but is really a place to start over
I should be mourning but I see a little morning
What appears to be disaster is changing my destiny
It looks like hell yet somehow I feel the presence of hope
Good Friday is the day we commemorate the death and burial of Jesus Christ. While it may not have been on a Friday and may not have been in April, it is the designated time when we mark the significance of the Son of God’s cruel crucifixion. We retell the story of His broken body claimed by a rich man named Joseph of Arimathea whose family had a yet unused grave in a nearby garden. And we celebrate the “rest of the story” – that when Mary and the other women came with fragrant oils to anoint the body of Jesus three days later, the stone was moved, the grave was empty of everything but graveclothes.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
The grave consequences of that grave are echoing still in the lives of men and women, boys and girls, around the world. The reality of a single empty grave that once housed the Savior of the world now risen and alive forevermore changes everything. This remarkable story of His blood shed for our redemption, His stripes for our healing are all parts of the story . . . consequences of the empty grave.
The reality of that empty grave echoes with hope and promise for us all. “Because He Lives” is a song written Bill and Gloria Gaither in the sixties. We seem to hear it a lot during the Easter season. The first verse is about grave consequences:
God sent his Son, they called Him Jesus
He came to love, heal, and forgive;
He lived and died to sign my pardon
An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives!
A more current lyric that echoes the sentiment of grave consequences, from Brandon Lake and Elevation Worship, titled “Graves Into Gardens”:
You turn mourning to dancing
You give beauty for ashes
You turn shame into glory
You're the only one who canYou turn graves into garden
You turn bones into armies
You turn seas into highways
You're the only one who can
You're the only one who can
And therein the greatest of all the consequences of all the graves in our lives. Whether it is a broken dream or a broken life, whether it is dire sin or just an authentic need for a Savior, Jesus Christ – the one who refused to let the grave consequence be death alone, but instead introduced the hope of resurrection – stands ready to redeem us all.