Because He lives. [John 11 v25]

I was thinking this morning about the resurrection, it would be easy to be like the Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection,when your dead ,your dead.After all ,death appears so final, and if you are cremated ,all that is left is an urn filled with ashes.so is that it?.If that is it ,then we may as well live just for time,and the things of time,let us eat, drink and be merry. When the writers of the Bible wrote,they lived with a greater awareness of death,in our modern times,death is hidden from us,we are occasionally reminded of it when the funeral cars pass us on their way to the graveyard,or crematorium. Yes there are those who live with a fear of death,children do,but on the whole it appears to be a closed subject. Maybe us, in the prosperous west  feel ,that eventually we will solve the intrusion of death,so it wont knock on our door. Maybe we are to afraid to think upon death,it is such a morbid thing,so let us just push it to the back of our minds,but that will not help for it will come back to hunt us.As a Christian minister I continually am reminding myself ,and others of death,but not as the final curtain,but as a door into eternity,that will lead to Heaven or Hell,depending whither one has trusted Jesus as ones Saviour. As to our bodies,without faith all we see is death,its  over,its over,its over,but then I hear Jesus, telling me ,God is not a God of the dead, but a God of the living.[ Matthew 22 v23].I hear Him declare that He is the resurrection and the life,that if I have faith in Him I will live even though I die.Now Jesus did not only speak words, He showed the reality of what He said,by rising from the dead, and so it is, that because He lives,we shall live also.
A  prayer..../ Dear God we thank You for Jesus who conquered death,and that through believing Him,death will not be the end Amen