When I was a kid, we always visited the cemeteries on Memorial Day, or as we called it Decoration Day, to decorate graves of our relatives. Mama even decorated graves of old family friends and lonely graves that didn’t have any flowers.
We spent the day driving to the cemetery, decorating the graves with Mama’s roses and snowballs in Mason jars, eating a picnic, and visiting with relatives we seldom saw. While the grown-ups talked, we cousins ran and played in the grave-yard, being careful not to step on the graves.
We always took photographs of tombstones. We still do—pictures and pictures year after year of the same tombstones.
One year probably about 1961 Uncle Cecil took Super-8 movies of us at the cemetery. Mom and three of my aunts were standing by the car when Aunt Irene, the staunch Pentecostal Holiness lady, decided to show us how to do the Charleston (dance). My cousin Donnie who was my age about 12 danced by in front of the camera making clown faces, then his brother Larry who was about 10 at the time started doing cartwheels. In the cemetery. On Memorial Day.
My dad is buried in that cemetery, as well as my mom’s parents, and my great grandparents. As much as I hate to think about it, if Jesus doesn’t return soon, I’ll be buried there too.
The ideal place to be buried is on top of a hill, with the body facing east, because Jesus Christ will appear in the eastern sky.
If you travel to Jerusalem to visit the grave of Jesus, you’ll find any empty tomb. The cave door is open and anyone can look in to see there are no bones in Jesus’ grave. His body is not there.
When Joseph of Arimathea laid Jesus’ dead body in the cave tomb he donated for Jesus’ burial, a large stone was placed over the entrance. The angels didn’t have to move the stone for Jesus to get out; they moved it to let the women in on Sunday morning.
“Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here but is risen.” Luke 24:5-6
Jesus is alive!