One of the spring highlights in Virginia is a visit to Colonial Williamsburg’s gardens. Thousands of heirloom tulips and other bulbs that have lain dormant over the winter burst to life to join redbuds, dogwoods, and ever-aresent boxwoods, creating a spectacular landscape of color and variety. It is hard to imagine those hidden, lifeless, dirt-covered bulbs containing within them such glory!
Because Christ rose from the dead that first Resurrection Day, we too have the hope of rising with Him in heavenly bodies when our earthly bodies expire. It may seem obvious, but the prerequisite for resurrection is death. “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies… But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body” (v. 36, 38).
The third verse of “In Christ Alone” (Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, 2001) describes Jesus’ resurrection this way: “There in the ground His body lay/ Light of the world by darkness slain/ Then bursting forth in glorious Day/ Up from the grave He rose again!”