Today is a day of stillness.  Of silence.  A necessary day for the grave.  Jesus entered the grave so that we may be in right relationship with God.

We also must enter the grave.  We must have our own “white funeral” as Oswald Chambers calls it.  A death to our old lives, so that we can be resurrected into the life of Christ.  As Jesus told Nicodemus, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”  (John 3:3)

“Have you really come to your last days?...Death means you stop being.  You must agree with God and stop being the intensely striving kind of Christian you have been.  We avoid the cemetery and continually refuse our own death.  It will not happen by striving, but by yielding to death.”  (Oswald Chambers, “My Utmost for His Highest”)

My Lord and Savior Jesus -  Through the Law I died to the Law and its demands on me because salvation is provided through Your death and resurrection, so that I might live to God.  I have shared in Your crucifixion; it is no longer I who live, but You who lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting in You, the Son of God, who has always loved me and gave Himself up for me.  If there is any part of me that I have not surrendered to You, that I have not let go of and allowed to die, make it known to me, Lord.  Prick me with the knowledge of it, and move me to have my own white funeral.  Amen.  (Based on Galatians 2:19-20, AMP)