Dear Friends,

Welcome into the circle of leaders! For inspiration we bring you a quotation from the Bible every week – to open up sources of life energy and healing and to give orientation. The Bible is not an easy book. We have to interpret it. This requires loyalty and patience. Whoever participates over years in the bimail will find comfort in God. We have begun with the Gospel of John.

Leaders are needed. The family, the company, the youth group, street kids, they all need strength and search for direction. The Bible teaches us to count on the power of God. It gives us power to move mountains. It gives us the belief that the dead are not dead. No one is left without hope.
You receive the message of the bimail every week. Free. Our only request is that you, as leaders, invite your friends to sign up for the bimail.

With joy about the growing community we greet you!

Upon visiting my hometown my first walk leads me to a grave. And then they are there again,
the images. There is absolute quiet in the cemetery where over a thousand people silently take
their departure. Parting from a twenty eight year old who died in an accident – while cutting
branches off a tree on a steep slope one began to roll and crushed him. Pictures of a young man.
His friendly and accommodating personality, his mischievous smile, his loving jabs at his overly
talkative academic uncle, his willingness to help which was appreciated and taken advantage of
by the whole village.

Images also of his crying mother and the stony expression on his father’s face - who in this
moment lost his son, the inheritor of the farmyard, his future and desired hope with one stroke.
Four years have passed and, nonetheless, the images are present with every visit to the grave.
When Jesus arrives in Hebron, which lies twenty kilometres south of Jerusalem, he visits a cave,
the grave of the mother and father of his faith. Abraham bought this piece of land when his wife
Sarah died, the first possession of property in the Promised Land. When Jesus stands on Mount
Nebo, he thinks of the grave of Moses that remains unidentified until today. According to
tradition, were his grave to be found the world could no longer exist because it would radiate so
much light.

And in Jerusalem, one shows Jesus the grave of King David and tells him that it was David who
conquered this city, built it up and made it a religious and political centre. When Jesus walks on
the Mount of Olives by the graves of the prophets, he is often reminded of a hard and violent
death. For Jesus graves are places of painful partings and at the same time places of
remembering, new beginnings and hope. With this faith he also comes to the grave of Lazarus, a
grave that has been cut into a cliff that one can still visit today. Jesus himself will be laid to rest
in such a grave not far from Golgotha.

The culture around graves changes. Places of rest in the forest, urn churches and community
graves have been added to traditional graves in cemeteries. What remains is the need to have a
place to commemorate, to show the departed respect and to have a sign of lasting memory. The
deceased nephew, his name and picture recorded on the cross, looks at me. The burning candle
is a testament to the light that he radiates, the flowers a testament to life which ever blossoms
anew.

And the cross does not deny the suffering that is bound up with death. When on All Souls’ Day,
at Christmas and after each mass parents, siblings, relatives and girlfriends gather around the
grave one thing becomes apparent: the grave is a place for life and for cohesion. Visits to the
grave, taking care of the grave are expression of a continuing relationship.

At which grave do I find comfort, assurance and peace? Which partings and which separations
have taught me to look at life anew?

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You find further Bimails in our archives