Questions About the Resurrection

Scripture Reading: Luke 20:1-47, Isaiah 26:19, 1 Corinthians 15:20-22

Whenever I travel from my home in North Carolina to visit family in Maryland, there’s a point on the trip when I always check GPS. Locals in the DMV (District/Maryland/Virginia) call it “the mixing bowl.” It’s a stretch of Interstate 95 in Springfield, Virginia, where roughly 9,840,326 roads (give or take) all converge into one massive blob of twisted asphalt. At that point, there are generally three main ways to get to my destination—west on 495 (the Capital Beltway) around D.C., east on 495 around D.C., or straight through the city. More often than not, it feels like picking which way you want to die a slow death.

When I hit the mixing bowl on a trip a few years ago, GPS pointed me on the westward route, but it added a twist. Beltway traffic was so abnormally horrendous that day, it told me to exit early and take a series of serpentine backroads through Montgomery County, Maryland, where I grew up.

At that point, I was tired, frustrated, and a bit dazed from the long drive. So it wasn’t until I had nearly passed the cemetery that the thought struck me: “Wait, that’s where my family is buried!” I hadn’t been to the cemetery in nearly twenty years, since shortly after my dad’s tragic death in 2004.

With my daughters in the car—four amazing young ladies whom my dad never met—I pulled into the cemetery and began scouting for the family plot, with my girls trailing silently behind. Then I saw them—two bronze markers side by side, one with my dad’s name on it and another with the names of my paternal grandparents. As the tears began to flow, I knelt down, reached out and touched the cold metal. My daughters encircled me in silence while my oldest gently began rubbing my back. The moment was powerful and cathartic. Soon, we were back on the road, headed for my mom’s house.

Different people grieve in different ways. Some people bring flowers to a gravesite on special occasions each year. Others, like me, deal with loss differently. While the remains of my loved ones might be in the ground in Maryland, the souls of my dad and grandparents—all faithful followers of Jesus in life—are with their Savior now. Isaiah’s words are both my comfort and my hope: “Your dead will live; their bodies will rise” (Isaiah 26:19)! One day, I will join my dad and grandparents in the Lord’s presence.

How do I know? Because Christ, “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1Corinthians 15:20) is alive! And if death couldn’t hold my Savior, so also in Him I will be made alive as well. He is not the God of the dead but of the living. Thank you, Jesus!

Written by Josh Cooley