Iwas eight years old when my grandmother passed. I recall my mother announcing her death to us and the fear that gripped my heart while I walked down the stairs, till I entered the vehicle that drove us home that night. In that same fear, I stared in disbelief when my mother asked me to drop some of my grandmother’s clothes in the wardrobe. I took the clothes with shaky hands and ran like my life depended on it through the hallway, threw the clothes and ran fast — at least fast enough for the ghost not to jump out of the clothes and grab me.
Someone had just passed, and many of my family members were mourning but me? I was looking out for the ghost in every cloth hanging in the dark. I was a child — I thought as a child and understood as a child. My heart had not grown to understand the finality of death, and the response of love to death.
When we speak of death, it can either be the Lord calling one home — in the case of a saint or the enemy stealing a life. The latter is our focus today and we will explore an interesting perspective on this matter from scripture.
First is the law of first mention, the first example of physical death in the Bible is the patriarch Abel who was murdered by his brother — Cain. We could have easily assumed that this murder was a mistake because what degree of wickedness must a man possess to actually kill his brother? But scripture does not give room for assumptions in this narrative, because from the conversation between Cain and God, we see the true reason Cain killed his brother.
Simple answer, it was a lack of love — to not see the need to be your brother’s keeper is to deny love. To allow your brother or “potential brother” to die when you could have done something within your power to prevent it is to simply say that you hate that person.
1 Corinthians 13 gives a more detailed perspective on this in its description of love and I will highlight just 3 attributes of love according to this scripture;
Love is kind
Love does not envy
Love does not think evil
If we can keep our hearts pure in love by yielding to kindness, resisting the temptations of envy, and training our minds to only think good, then we become truly reliable agents of the expression of God’s power on earth, licensing us to be able to receive the dead back to life.
If the graveyard will vomit any life to you, you must show up in undefiled garments of love.
Do we not see this in the life and ministry of our perfect model — Jesus?
Yet again, the law of the first mention comes in, the first person Jesus raised from the dead was the only child of a Widow at Nain. In Luke 7: 11–15, we see this story but specifically, verse 13 says when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her.
The miracle of resurrection we witness in this text was born from the compassion of Jesus. In the same vein, when we see Jesus calling forth Lazarus, we see love at work as well, love that even made him weep. In the story of Jarius’s daughter, we see a father who loved his daughter so much to find the one who loved his daughter even more, and that was how she came back to life.
The reason the enemy can steal the lives of those around us and go scot-free is because someone’s love walk is weak and dying. The supernatural expressions we seek are locked up in the depths of love. The power we want to see on display will not be released until love reigns in our bodies.
Think of the greatest resurrection story, Jesus! It was all because of His Love for us because He desires that every one of us pass from death to life. If we have received such incredible depths of love, how then is it that we are comfortable with graveyards being built all around us and we simply ignore them? Why are there so many walking dead experiencing silence from the ones who carry the life-giving spirit?
There are many agendas in our day and age which are modified graveyards, things that are swallowing people’s lives and it is the awakening of love in our hearts that will spur us to pioneer projects, terminate tenures of torment and deliver destinies.
There are many love notes from the graveyard, notes that tell us that Love really delivers men from death — don’t be like my 8-year-old self who responded to death in fear, respond to death in Love.
God bless you, have a great week ahead!
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