Where is your sting?

Many or all of us reading this email have had the opportunity to deal
with the death of a loved one. Some are still trying to deal with it.
I'm not trying to dictate your grief, and how you handle it, but after
reading this, I am reminded that whether you believe they are looking
down on us, or they "know nothing", we still have an opportunity to see
them again one day. That alone helps to ease some of my pain, and I
hope some of yours.
--Dave

"O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?
1 Cor. 15:55

Recently while a man and his two young sons were walking
along a country road, a bee stung the elder of the two boys right
above his eye. The boy quickly brushed it away and threw himself
in the grass, kicking and screaming. No sooner had the bee been
brushed away when it went straight for the younger boy and began
buzzing around his head. The younger boy tried to hide in the
tall grass and began screaming for help. The dad picked him up
and told him not to worry - the bee had lost its stinger.
This particular bee can sting only once. It leaves its stinger
in the victim and becomes harmless. So the dad took the younger
son over to his older brother and showed him the little black
stinger in his brother's brow. He told him, "The bee can still
buzz and scare you, but it is powerless to hurt you. Your brother
took the sting away."
In 1 Corinthians 15:56, the apostle Paul said that the sting
of death is sin. But Jesus Christ took the sting for us by dying
in our place on the cross. Death is now powerless to hurt us
because Jesus took its sting. (Hallelujah!)
Death may "buzz around" and scare us, but it cannot hurt us
anymore. We need not fear God's judgment. All death can do is
open the door to Glory!

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"The sting of death is sin; ... But thanks be to God! He gives
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
1 Corinthians 15:56-57