Sometimes, making an inanimate thing live can be a powerful way of delivering a message.  The fact that such an object will tell its own story is a means of attracting attention to a significant point.  And what could be more significant than the fact that the cave is empty, the body has gone, and the Living Christ, our Saviour is risen?!  Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Christ is risen, He is risen indeed!  May God use this slightly different account of that wonderful event touch you this Easter as we celebrate our living Lord, Jesus Christ.  God bless you for Christ is risen!

THE CAVE

 I had my moment of glory, you know,

At a time when creation stood still,

And the angels in Heaven were thunder-struck

At what happened on Calvary’s hill.

I had waited for several millennia

In that hill, in that garden so fair.

I’d been home to hundreds of creatures

At some time they’d all been in my care.

I had even sheltered a family –

Not the Holy Ones, I’m sad to say –

But this little group of cave-dwellers

Had been glad in my safeness to stay.

For I am a cave in the hillside,

Dark and damp as we caves tend to be

But I did have my moment of glory.

May I tell how the Christ honoured me?

‘Twas early on Friday evening,

Though inexplicably night.

Strange things were happening on Calvary

And the sun had lost all its light.

Then Joseph of Arimathea

And his friend, Nicodemus, too

Came struggling through my entrance

As men with a burden do.

They laid down their bundle inside me

On a shelf running down one wall,

And a thrill ran through each piece of gravel

As I cradled the Christ in His stall.

Weeping gently the men rose and left us

And a stone was rolled over my door.

But that was okay for inside me

Was Lord Jesus – who could ask for more?

All that night, and all through the next day

It was quiet in the garden around.

The birds had even stopped singing.

Nature mourned, and there was no sound.

Then, as it grew light on that Sunday

Jesus stirred and sat up in His tomb,

Conquering death and all that it stands for,

But still safely enclosed in my room.

Then slowly the stone moved to one side

Both darkness and evil now fled,

And light and sound filled every cranny

As Jesus came back from the dead!

He left me – but still I can feel Him

Where He lay on the shelf down my wall

And people come daily to see me

Where I cradled the Christ in His stall.

But now folk are always rejoicing

When they look in my door and they see

That the shelf down my wall is quite empty

And Jesus is living and free.