As we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord this week, I trust you will take time to sit down with your children and impress upon them the truth of the resurrection and where we would be without it. Perhaps it would be a good time to read and explain to your children some of the things in the 15th chapter of Ist Corinthians that point out where we would be without a resurrection (verses 14-19).
For my own part, one of the greatest blessings of the resurrection has been deliverance from the fear of death. Even as a young boy I worried about death and what would come afterwards. Perhaps WWII and the daily casualty reports had something to do with it. When I saw pictures in Life Magazine of the bodies of Marines strewn on the beaches of Iwo Jima, I asked my
mother, “What happens to them after they die?” She explained in the best way she could by telling me it depended on how they had lived and if the good outweighed the bad. That didn’t help me at all.
Years later after climbing Mt. Suribachi during a maneuver and viewing graves of most of the almost 7,000 Marines who died there, I again experienced a sobering time that made me think. While in the Marines I did a lot of flying between bases and on “hops” we took on furloughs. Some of them were on C-119’s which were dubbed “flying coffins” because of how often they crashed. We were even issued parachutes on some flights. “One long whistle, put it on, two long whistles, jump out!” were the words I vividly remember. I was always scared to death in flight. After my salvation, by God’s grace, in 1954 I lost that fear, and now I fly regularly from my home on this island in small single engine “island hoppers.” I have seen people shaking, holding on to seats or the person next to them. Recently a woman moaned, groaned, and at times screamed every moment of our 20-minute flight.
One of my favorite Bible passages is “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” Hebrews 2:15.
This week I purchased two burial plots in the Blough Mennonite Cemetery where your grandparents are buried. This is located about two or three hundred yards from my old home place. Your mother and I decided we’d like to be buried where it would be easiest for you all to visit, since half of you live in Alaska and half in “the lower 48.” I like graveyards where you can be “dead yet speaketh” (Heb. 11:4). In many cemeteries now you have to have a GPS to find a flat marker limited to a name and date. I know preachers say we should not think about death but of the Lord’s return. The way things are going since January, His return looks imminent, but just in case either your mother or I go up before that grand event, it has given us peace to know this part has been taken care of. The plots were only $150 each. Some of you might like to buy one!
Augustus Toplady, the hymnist who gave us that immortal hymn “Rock of Ages” wrote: “The terrors of law and of God, With me have nothing to do, My Saviour’s obedience and blood, Hide all my transgressions from view.”
Grace Be With You, Amen.
DAD
Left arrow: Blough Church and Cemetery Right arrow: Blough Home
Grandma Bea's childhood home is the farm from which the picture is taken.
Photo by Aunt Annie Lou
Gravestone of Grandma and Grandpa Blough - Photo by Aunt Annie Lou
