Astrange thing happened at the U.S. Air Force Academy cemetery about 16 years ago when I decided to go find my friend Mark’s grave.

Mark and I knew each other from Ramstein Air Base, Germany when I attended a weekly Bible study sponsored by Officer’s Christian Fellowship in his home. Although I was an enlisted troop, I had been generously welcomed into the group. Mark was an F-16 pilot and I had the opportunity to get an incentive flight in his back seat two weeks before I rotated back to the United States. It had been an incredible opportunity and an experience I shall never forget. Thirteen months later, I would be stunned to receive a phone call telling me his plane had crashed into the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Italy.

With resolve, I set out to find his grave and pay my respects about 10 years after his death. I stopped at the entrance of the cemetery and looked him up on the grave locator. As I trudged amongst the gravestones trying to make sense of the locating system, I grew frustrated because I just couldn’t understand how the graves were numbered. I was embarrassed that I simply couldn’t find Mark’s grave.

The frustration quickly faded as I noticed a nearby grave of Carlton, a Security Forces officer acquaintance of mine that I was unaware had died. I knew it had been a long time since there was any contact with Carlton, but such is life in the military. Often as you move from base to base, you lose contact with people. I came to the USAFA cemetery to find the grave of a friend, which I never found that day, only to find a grave of a friend I didn’t expect to find. I later returned to the cemetery and was able to find my pilot friend’s grave.

A very strange thing also happened to Jesus in a cemetery. He had been summoned because his friend Lazarus was ill. Much to the consternation of his disciples, Jesus waited two days before going to the bedside of his close friend. By the time Jesus arrived, a sister of Lazarus confronted Jesus about the delay, telling him Lazarus had been dead for four days. As this was long before the modern practice of embalming, the odor made it very apparent. The closeness of their friendship is reflected in the passage as relates how Jesus was deeply moved when he encountered the mourners.

Jesus had a reputation for upsetting funeral planning. With a voice of authority Jesus yelled out, “Lazarus, come forth.” Amazingly, Lazarus emerged from the tomb alive and was helped with removing his graveclothes used to prepare bodies. Certainly, Lazarus would pass away again years later. But, in the end there is a reason that what is placed in a grave is referred to as ‘remains.’

Throughout the Bible, there is a recurring theme of an afterlife beyond what we experience on this planet. In the military, we referred to each new base as an assignment. For the follower of Jesus Christ, this earth is just an assignment. A Christian is merely passing through on their way to an eternal reward.

II Corinthians 5:17 promises the believer the moment they become a disciple of Jesus Christ they become a new creature and that old things are passed away. Within this moment an adoption process is completed where the Christian is now part of the family of God with an inheritance of eternal life. The friends’ graves I visited do not contain the actual pilot or security forces officer who were my friends. Those plots only contain the physical remains of those people. For them, they are in the presence of God experiencing a heaven that is beyond the wildest imagination of a Netflix movie.