The pond has been cleaned out and has fresh water. It’s never a fun project at the time, especially cleaning out the sludge from the bottom, but if I want the pond to look good I have to get down and dirty with it about once a year. The rest of the time it maintains a good ecological balance on its own.

I promised you some of my thoughts on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and why I find the event to be believable. Whether Jesus’ resurrection is fact or fantasy is the crucial issue of the Christian faith.

Remember that old joke about who’s buried in Grant’s tomb? Well, to the question as to who is buried in Jesus’ tomb, the answer is -- nobody!

During our trip to the Holy Land we visited both locations where it is believed Jesus may have been buried. The first tomb is located in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher; the second tomb is in a garden. There’s a dispute as to which location is the actual burial place of Jesus, but a majority of those who study these things say the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the likely location. Both tombs are open for tours. I was in both; they’re empty.

I suppose a person could argue that losing a body, or the actual location of where a body was buried, some 2,000 years later isn’t too surprising. But the fact is that Jesus’ body was never recovered, not even in those initial days after His death and burial. That’s what disturbed the Roman authorities who had Him put to death on the cross. According to the Gospel writer Matthew, who was one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, the authorities paid the soldiers guarding the tomb to spread a rumor that the disciples had stolen the body. Matthew indicates it was a rumor that was still alive years later, at the time he wrote his gospel account.

The idea is silly, of course. The gospels all portray the disciples as being defeated and fearful after the crucifixion and burial of Jesus. The last thing on their minds would have been the macabre plot to steal the body of Jesus. But the main problem with any theory that has the disciples faking a resurrection is that all the disciples eventually ended up being martyred for their faith in the resurrected Christ. People don’t live, let alone die, for a lie.

Others argue against the resurrection by proposing that believers in Jesus so badly wanted Him to be alive that they just imagined Him resurrected. This doesn’t hold water for the simple reason that the disciples didn’t expect to see Him alive again. On several occasions the disciples were slow to believe He was alive, and in the case of the Apostle Thomas he didn’t actually believe for an entire week until He saw Jesus for himself.

The eleven resurrection appearances of Jesus listed in the historical records of the four gospels happened in several different places at different times. Some of Jesus’ appearances were to individuals or a couple of people, but others were to the group of twelve disciples. One appearance was to a crowd of over 500 people! People don’t hallucinate in groups! What is also interesting is that these appearances stopped immediately forty days after the resurrection, when the accounts describe Jesus’ ascension to heaven.

There’s another reason it makes no sense that the stories of the resurrection appearances of Jesus were creations of the early church. It is highly unlikely that early church believers would have portrayed their top leadership, the apostles, in the bad light of being so resistant to believing.

I don’t have the time to give you all the additional proofs, but this will give you an idea of the kind of significant evidence available that gives credibility to the belief that Jesus rose from the dead. Frankly, I think it takes a greater leap of faith not to believe in the resurrection of Jesus than it does to believe that He was really raised from the dead!

It’s a windy day, it’s spring, and I have a kite that I bought last week. All that’s missing is a small child to stand by me as I fly the kite so I don’t look foolish. But we have a family coming over in a little while and they have a little boy. I’m getting out the kite. As long as the wind holds I’ll have all the necessary elements for a good time!

A fellow seeker after truth,
Dave