It was one year ago this week, that a girl was asked, "Do you believe in God?" as a gun was being held to her head. She answered, "Yes" and the gunman killed her.

In October, six people who were God fearing, Jesus loving, true to their families boarded the priviate plane of professional golfer Payne Stewart. Tragicly the plane crashed and all six were killed.

So what happened in Littleton Colorado? What happened up in the sky? Did God look the other way? Why didn’t he save these people, he saved Jarius’ daughter? What happened to Jesus’ promise,

It certainly would make believing a lot easier if God would cure everyone we ask Him to cure, if God would correct all our problems we ask Him to correct, if God would save us from dying as we ask Him to. It is hard to believe because we are surrounded in life by unbelievers, skeptics and cynics.

People who say, Believe or not, death comes.

It’s true no one is exempt from mortality. Not even Jarius daughter was exempt. She may have been raised from death in this particular story, but she did indeed die later on in life.

Death has it’s own agenda and timeline.  Death possesses young and old, the wise and foolish, the cherished and the abandoned, the good and the bad.  Death doesn’t care about age, race, gender, political persuation.  Death is not intimidated by stature, influence, or possessions.  If there is one place humanity stands on equal ground it is death.

When death comes, its impact on our life is no different than the impact of the news Jarius received that his daughter was dead.  Its like being hit by a two by four in the back of the head.  Yet when death comes Jesus says,

So what are we to believe?

If you believe that living on this earth is all that there is to life, then you would be hopeless in answering the question of death.  But this world is not all there is.  In God’s incredible plan, our time here is only a short preliminary to our eternal existence.  For those who believe in God and His grace what’s ahead is incredibly amazing.

Because of Jesus’ triumphant resurrection, we can ‘only believe’ that when a faithful person dies God ushers them into His presence.  We believe this because of the many promises of eternal life which Jesus gave us.  We believe this because we celebrate not the tradegy of Jesus’ death but the triumph of His resurrection.  We believe because the Psalmist said,

Easter is a proclamation, that we are not in the land of the living, going to the land of the dying.  We are in the land of the dying, going to the land of the living.

Easter is a declaration to the believer that death is a beginning and not an end.

Easter is a decree that death is not a tradegy, but a triumph.

Easter is a proclamtion that Jesus has power over life and death.

To believe or not to believe, that is the question.

May the resurection of Jesus, speak to your heart. May it impact your life on a daily basis.  May it prompt you to make a commitment to Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior.

Robert Farley, a friend of Payne Stewarts, a friend who died in that same plane crash, had for his challenge this saying, "We must care for our bodies as though we are going to live forever.  But we must care for our souls as if we were going to die tomorrow."

To only care for our bodies means death is tragic.

To care for the soul means death is triumphant.

For that’s what Jesus meant when he said,