Veux-tu vivre ressuscité?
A sprawling, shade-bearing, eighty-year-old American elm in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is a huge tourist attraction. People pose for pictures beneath her. Arborists carefully protect her. She adorns posters and letterhead. The city treasures the tree, not because of her appearance but her endurance.
She made it through the Oklahoma City bombing. Timothy McVeigh parked his death-laden truck only yards from her. His malice killed 168 people, wounded 850, destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, and buried the tree in rubble. No one expected it to survive. No one gave any thought to the dusty, branch-stripped tree.
But then she began to bud. Sprouts pressed through damaged bark; green leaves pushed away gray soot. Life rose from an acre of death. People noticed. The tree modeled the resilience the victims desired. So they named her the Survivor Tree.
I. La “vie” d’un mort v. 1-3
II. La vie de celui qui était mort v. 4-7
III. La vie que Dieu donne à ceux qui étaient morts v. 8-10
A woman was diagnosed with a terminal illness. As she was getting her things in order, she contacted her pastor and asked him to come to her house to discuss some of her final wishes.
She told him the songs she wanted sung at her funeral service, the Scriptures she wanted read, and the outfit she wanted to be buried in. She also asked to be buried with her favorite Bible.
As the pastor prepared to leave, the woman remembered something else. “There’s one more thing,” she said excitedly.
“What’s that?” said the pastor.
“I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand.”
The pastor stood looking at the woman, not knowing what to say.
The woman explained. “In all my years of attending church socials and potluck dinners, when the dishes of the main course were being cleared, someone would inevitably say, ‘Keep your fork.’ It was my favorite part of the meal because I knew something better was coming—like velvety chocolate cake or deep-dish apple pie.
“So when people see me in that casket with a fork in my hand and they ask, ‘What’s with the fork?’ I want you to tell them, ‘Keep your fork. The best is yet to come!’ ”