Lenten Devotions: William Sangster

The stone, which was very large, had been rolled away.  —Mark 16:4

Make no effort to hide the fact. Death is the great enigma of life. Humanly speaking, it is an insoluble mystery; it is the one secret of the universe that is kept, the silence that is never broken. Death is one of the rare things that can be predicted of all people, the common end to a path of glory or to a road of shame. To the weary and despairing it may come as a friend; the cynical and disillusioned may meet it with indifference; to the healthy and happy it may appear as a foe. But as friend or foe or cold companion, it comes to all. All our plans for the future are made subject to its approval. There is no earthly tie too sacred for death to loosen. It reduces the exalted and the lowly to the common denominator of dust.

Moreover, the mystery is as old as humanity. From the dimmest beginnings of history, we find people pondering the problem of the beyond. In the upward movement of the human race, we find people nursing their hopes on a variety of dreams and passing in turn from belief in a dim spirit life to the shadowy existence called Sheol and finally to the vision of a life fuller and grander than this. But it was still a mystery. These dreams were dreams, interesting speculations, but nothing more. Death was still “the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns” (Hamlet). This was the great stone that blocked the path of human aspiration. What certainty was there of the continuity of life? What modest individual could find in himself or in herself anything worthy to endure for all eternity? Of what abiding worth was love—even our highest—if it ended in the passionless calm of death?

Then came the first Easter day and—the stone was rolled away! That stone! Mark says it was very large. And now it is rolled away, for one traveler returned. Death is an abysmal cavern no more, but a tunnel with a golden light at the farther end. It is no more a blind alley but a thoroughfare, no more a cul-de-sac but a highway. The mystery is a mystery no more.

“And,” says Paul, “if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you” (Rom. 8:11).