Unmarked Graves:

     I used to walk in a small cemetary where  most of the graves there were from the turn of the 18 th century.  Revolutionary markers adorned the small pathways flags and flowers distributed throughout the area.  I read with couriosity all of the names that had come before me with a sense of wonder, even those of children and babies that never made it past 5 months of life, and there were many.  Superstitious?  I'm not.
Instead it filled me with a sense of belonging as strange as it may seem.  I always read the end dates, the date of death, and I would try and figure out their life's span and fill in the blanks of their history.  To some walking in a cemetary would give them a cold feeling, or sense of " here is what is waiting for me! and so would only venture in when they absolutely had too.  Me, I'd walk the dog and meander throughout.
     So many movies, books etc. make use of the scary aspect of graves and spiked fences around them.  Death it seems is always the most fearful because we just don't know how it is going to be.  We have in our nature to hold on to life to the very end. Remarkable stories of survival ( 124 hrs the most recent with James Franco) are every where. The human spirit wants to live at all costs.  So death then is something we are afraid of.
     But, the entire Gospel is in direct opposition to that.  Resurrection!  LIFE BEYOND THE GRAVE>It is the good news preached by the one who overcame death, and hell and the grave.  And he took captivity captive! Preaching in hell to those who were destined to stay there forever/ mercy triumphs over judgement.    In the book of Luke Christ was giving his list of "woes" to the Pharisees, one of them concerning umarked graves.
     44 “Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which people walk over without knowing it.”

     In Jewish law it was forbidden to touch any dead thing for the sake of defilement.  So what was Jesus saying?  More or less your a dead thing and you don't know it just like an unmarked grave.  I'm glad graves have markers.  It it somewhere someone you love could be laying.  Just the body though....................