The great struggle that the disciples of the Lord had, even after they had given up everything for His sake, and were following Him, was the struggle to understand what He was talking about. He often had to chide them for their unbelief, which is what He called it. They called it not getting the point, but He saw through to why they weren’t getting the point.
Unbelief blinds, and faith gives sharp vision. Jesus told His disciples expressly that He was going to come back from the dead. He knew on the basis of what the Scripture had predicted centuries before. Scripture could not be broken, and this is why the chains of death had to be broken.
Unbelief doesn’t get it. Unbelief struggles with seeing anything outside the current realm of experience. The only problem is, the current realm of experience, going on all around us, is every bit as outlandish as the most “out there” promise of God. “Is it so incredible that God would raise the dead?” Paul asks (Acts 26:8). This is actually no more incredible than that we should all be alive the first time—and yet here we all are.
Look around you. Look at the bark on a tree, really look at it. Look at the grass in your yard, back again this spring. Look at the sun rise, and the snow melt. Look at the rivers cascading to the sea. Look at the spiders, and the oysters, and the cougars, and the sun in the sky, and the moon alongside her. Look at the back of your hand, and the staggering engineering that went into your ability to hold your Bible. Look at our graves, and all the headstones. Look at the beauty above ground, and if you do this rightly, you will come to understand the restiveness below, the expectancy.
Christ is risen, and the faithful dead all on tiptoe, waiting for Him bring the rest of creation along. The day is coming, and now is, when death will go to the grave.