Article June 3, 2013 ISSUE

Commissioned as sentinels

Christopher Cieply

I love a passage in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass in which Alice is talking with the White Queen and proclaims, “One can’t believe impossible things.” The Queen responds, “I daresay you haven’t had much practice!... Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

I shared this passage in a memorial message for a soldier killed in Iraq, explaining that there are many reasons why we have memorial ceremonies, one of which is that we come hoping and wishing to believe “impossible” things. Christian Science explains what Jesus declared—“With God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26)—and invites us to consider the accomplishment of the “impossible” as a divinely natural occurrence. The Bible abounds with stories of events that could only be met with wonder and skepticism! One such “impossible” thing, proclaimed by the Christian faith, is that one grave is empty—Jesus Christ is raised from the dead!