Sunken Graves

My eight years of university professional schooling, I worked nights and weekends in order to pay for school.

My time in Memphis, working for a large cemetery, the cemetery in which Elvis was first interred (mausoleum) after his death. I learned much about burials. I was amazed at the stories the long time cemetery Director told me. Family feuds, etc. To accommodate large machinery lawn mowers, etc, when a vault was not used, a cement grave liner.

As a child, old graveyards, SUNKEN GRAVES. Some elderly person in the family with wheelbarrow and shovel would fill in the grave. Everyone knew that the casket in the grave had deteriorated. Long ago, there were few burial vaults just cheap wood coffins. The “tough” people of that day knew that the body would return to the earth the Christian words at the burial “ash to ash and dust to dust” In recent years, more money to spend, metal caskets-cement vaults.

Christians know that the human creation has a human nature and a divine nature... a body and a soul. The soul, real ID, of a person is without mass, supernatural. At clinical death the soul returns to God. The human nature body returns to the earth.

God planned it all, He , Himself, putting on a tent of human flesh (John I) Jesus had a divine nature and a human nature. Mary taught him his colors, Joseph taught him to use a saw. Yet, in every way, He was divine, always God. He made the world yet yielded to the restrictions and natural ways of the world... friendships, hunger, thirst, gravity. Just as we, in all reality, cannot live anyway we want to, play the violin anyway we want to, play golf anyway we want to, the human nature observes laws, rules, absolutes.

I am firmly convinced that most religious people even Christians, do not understand that the holy spirit of God must possess the heart and soul of the individual. We have faith to believe in our eternal security, now and forever. Through our divine nature we have a special relationship with God. I did not understand completely, the theology of eternal security until I watched a father and young son walk down the street. The security of the young son did not depend on him holding on to the father but the father holding on to him, the confidence of the father's love. So it is with us, faith is a verb “action based on belief sustained by confidence” On this side of the cross, believers, depending on grace through faith, have had a strange understanding... not fully depending on God. At Calvary, the pivotal point in human history, the veil of the temple was rent top to bottom, not top to almost bottom. Many have depended on works (Catholics) Many depending on some other person's words (Christian science, Mormons) some even depending on “free masons” The masons started in Europe during the building of cathedrals even though catholics were not and are not allowed to claim membership in the masons. The statue of Liberty was given by the masons of France to the masons of America. To show the discrimination of such religious piety, in 1887, dedication of the statue five hundred white men, two women wives of the governor of NY and president of the United States. Not one black, one American Indian, one disabled person, one poor person.

Recently, a 5.8 earthquake on the east coast. The 3 buildings damaged in Washington, DC, all dedicated by masons. The Washington monument, damaged. Washington, became a mason in 1752, Grand Master in 1782, totally devoted to free masons. The national cathedral, damaged. It has taken 100 years to build this cathedral dedicated by masons. President Theodore Roosevelt, mason, spoke at the dedication. Supposedly, it was a Christian cathedral, Episcopal. It is now used by all religions including Buddhists Muslims and Hindus. The Christian church has gone the way of the national cathedral. The treasury building, damaged. Dedicated by Masons, this building older than the Capitol or White House, a country now sinking by debt.

We pretend that everything is fine when it isn't. We live in a time of illusion better homes, more money, better vacations, better technology. Ralph Waldo Emerson gave his definition of success, “If you have in your life, made one life better.” The average man works 86,400 hours in his work life. So many of these lives, hours are just quiet desperation. Built within us, that divine nature to communicate with and depend on our Creator we do not need substitutes. Henry David Thoreau said on should spend 10 minutes per day in quiet with our living God and Creator of the universe.

In the time of Jesus,the leaper was unclean, could not be touched, could not go into the temple. One came to Jesus and asked for cleansing. The scripture tells us that Jesus touched him (Mark 1:41) Think of the many who live a long life then buried back to the soil never knowing the divine touch. The hand of Jesus touched me,

And now I am no longer the same.   He Touched Me: Gaithers