It's a space where they place
The dead. Where those displaced from the ranks
of the living go to taste the regrets of time wasted.
Encased in a dark and dank resting place
that doesn't rest well
with the rest of the human race,
Who ALL face the inevitable, ignominious, and imminent departure
from the face of this terrestre
Where we are said to embrace what some boldly,
but others barely and naively believe
is just another, but much better, place.
We're marked by the stark and bold foreboding shadow cast
by the cold grave over young and old.
Over plans of life that end too fast
and, as it turns out, don't last
like fool's gold.
So we look longingly for something longer
than these short-lived dreams
and shortened dramas
dragged down by thoughts that dredge-up
an undesirable and undelayable death
and dwell on the demoralizing details of an unknown,
dreaded after-life.
But for those chasing after life, life after death is just an afterthought,
cause they thought that after this life we just stop living.
The Grave; Don't say, "C'est pas grave"
because the gravity of its finality
lingers and clings to us like a maladie,
its grave reality engraved on our conscience.
This consciousness we've been given
of a mortality that ends our livin'.
For every one of us
it's the one thing ahead we most dread -
the unconscionable thought of ending life dead.
It's messin' with our head,
enough said.
Where's the hope?
I'm glad you asked
Because by asking, we stop acting like members of a cast
in costumes and masks,
and instead start facing the facts
That there's someone who adores me, who already went before me
My Messiah, the Sign o'God's desire
to save us from the fire, a Redeemer,
my ransom's buyer with an eye on my plight, who fought my fight
so I don't have to face the grave alone.
Cause what Jesus did when He died was he didn't stay dead,
but His greatest deed went down the day He was dealt
the death blow by his destiny.
You see, the devil desired to defeat Him
by delaying him from the tree,
determined to undermine him and demoralize him.
Even those who had wanted to immortalize him
would later cry out, "Crucify him."
But you can't hold down or outlast the everlasting.
That's the last thing ever
you can try and do.
See, He was the Firstfruit, bringing to fruition from the past
the plan of God that a perfect man, called the First and Last,
should cast himself into the calloused hands of sinful man,
To fulfill the promise to take our thirsting, fallen lives
and make them fruitful,
The Firstborn from among the dead, throwing down his crown,
adorned by a wreath of thorns,
endowed and re-crowned with power,
now and forever,
his renown gone out for how He overpowered
mighty sin and the grave.
Being God, He who loved human beings with all of His being,
was laid in a tomb like a seed sown in the soil.
Unseeing behind the stone,
they closed Him in that dark empty room..
It seemed that the tragic scene that had seen Him bleeding and beaten,
berated and naked
had now ended in being sealed in a soiled shrowd of shame.
But the Forerunner, foreknown as the One who would go before us,
this author and finisher of our faith,
when His blood had sufficiently finished running down,
all poured out,
Shouted, "It is finished". He routed
and finished off the whisperer,
the accuser of the brothers, the sisters.
Cause what followed three days and nights of silence and sorrow
was that death was swallowed up in life.
Mortality, decay, and destruction clothed itself in immortal reality.
Reduced to a formality of life,
the finality of death never ever again having the last word.
'Cuz the buzzards that used to hover above have been plucked
and that swarming buzz of fear that used to linger
in your ear is no longer heard,
cause death has lost its stinger.
The grave's victory is now history.
Death is no longer menacing, missing meaning in inscrutable mystery,
cause the ministry
of our High Priest achieved for us an ability
to live for eternity.
His resurrection rectified everything defiled by the Fall,
finally effecting everlasting living
for every breathing being
who puts their belief in Him.
The fruit of His affection
for those who used to be left bereft by the effects of death
is that we think in a new direction;
The fear of the grave is no longer a perplexing infection. Upon reflection,
our future is now sure, and though surely
we share pain and sickness and
there be shadows and questions,
be assured of the lesson of the grave, now empty:
We were dead,
Christ died,
He rose,
we rise,
It's Paradise.
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