John Mark Hicks

Every life visit graves, and every life ends with a grave. Where is the abundant life when we are standing beside a grave? I imagine that question passed through the minds of the disciples as they hid behind locked doors after Jesus died. From their vantage point, “Good Friday” was not good. It squashed their […]

This Easter, before assembling with other believers, I did something that I had never done before. I visited Joshua’s grave. For me visiting graves has rarely been comforting. In fact, it was the opposite. The graveyard seemed too permanent. It contained too many granite stones which testified to both the pervasiveness and intransigence of death. I […]

Yesterday I drove to Ellijay, Georgia–the city of my wife’s birth, upbringing, marriage, death and burial. She died around 2:00am on April 30, 1980 while convalescing in her parent’s home from back surgery twenty days before. Yesterday I drove to her graveside alone. I had not been there alone in some years, perhaps decades. It was […]

When Sheila died in 1980, I discovered that I was one who neither enjoyed nor desired to visit graves. For me visiting the grave was not very comforting. In fact, it was the opposite. The graveyard seemed too permanent. It contained too many granite stones which testified to both the pervasiveness and intransience of death. I didn’t […]