I clearly remember 58 years ago today. It was a Thursday night and I was upstairs in my parents’ bedroom. Everyone else watched another TV show downstairs, and I was up watching my favorite “Ironside” with Raymond Burr, which started at 7 p.m. It was interrupted by a news bulletin. Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot in Memphis, Tennessee.
Not long after, on June 6, I woke up early and my dad was watching the news about another shooting. This time it was Bobby Kennedy. I still have memories of a week long TV montage of when John F. Kennedy was killed. I was 8 years old, and November 22 is still a day I remember each year.
Loss can be painful. But as believers, we have hope that this life is not the end. If Christ didn’t get up from the dead, we’d be the most pitiful of all people.
1 Corinthians 15:19 [The Passion Translation]:
If the only benefit of our hope in Christ is LIMITED to this LIFE ON EARTH, we deserve to be pitied more than all others!
Tomorrow we celebrate Christ’s resurrection. We have a firm and steady hope in him! He’s coming back for us.
1 Corinthians 15:20 [The Passion Translation]:
But the truth is, CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD, as the firstfruit of a GREAT RESURRECTION HARVEST of those who have died.
Hebrews 6:19:
Which HOPE we have as an anchor of the soul, both SURE AND STEDFAST.
We mourn when our loved ones die. But our sorrow is not like others who do not have this hope. We rejoice in Christ Jesus and all he has done for us. Including rising from death so that we might have eternal life, with new bodies someday like his.
1 Thessalonians 4:13:
But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye SORROW NOT, even as others which have NO HOPE.
Romans 10:9:
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath RAISED HIM FROM THE DEAD, thou shalt be SAVED.
Philippians 3:21:
Who shall CHANGE our vile [mortal] body, that it may be fashioned like unto HIS GLORIOUS BODY, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.
Have a blessed resurrection Sunday tomorrow, knowing that our hope in Christ is true and sure.
