In a Grave

The following poem was written by my mother in 1977.  I felt it appropriate to our last few posts.

Take an oak of some 100 years growth.

How was that oak born?  In a Grave.

The acorn was planted in the ground; a grave was made for it that the acorn might die.  It died and disappeared, casting its roots downward and shoots upward, and now that tree has been standing a hundred years.

Where is it standing?  In its own Grave.

All he time - in the very grave where the acorn died, it has stood there stretching its roots deeper and deeper into that earth in which its grave was made and, yet, all the time - though it stood in the very grave where it had died, it had been growing higher and stronger, and broader, and more beautiful.  All the fruit it ever bore, all the foliage that adorned it year by year, it owed to that grave in which its roots are cast and kept.

Even so, Christ owed everything to His death and His Grave.  And we, too owe everything to that grave of Jesus.

Oh, let us live everyday rooted in the death of Jesus.  To my own will, will I die; to human wisdom and strength and to the world, will I die.  For it is in the grave of my Lord that His life has it beginning, its strength, and its glory.

Christ is the acorn that went down into the Grave.  And waited for His Father trusting in Him to give Him new life.  His roots bore fruitful branches and, in death, was His true life...to go back to the Father so that we could copy Him and do the same.  God gave Him life back ten thousand times more glorious than His life or our on earth.  Jesus was born twice  - the first time in Bethlehem, a life born into weakness - the second time, from the Grave - He is the "first-born" from the Grave.

*Copyrighted 1977.  Used by permission.