10,000 acres of graves

This morning on the Today show I heard a story about a man who stumbled on 10,000 acres of graves. Bud Merrit was hiking in Milledgeville, Georgia when he stumbled across the forgotten cemetery. (Read the entire story.)He found one and then uncovered the rest. Numbered stakes connected to the buried dead from a large mental hospital. These were the graves associated with a massive mental hospital that housed 13,000 residents. he has found about 25,000 graves, all numbered withuot names. Some of the graves and names are recorded in a log that begins over 160 years ago. There are over 100,000 graves in the U.S. that are unnamed. How many more are buried without recognition?
This man made it his mission to reclaim the dead, to find out who they were, to tell their stories. One man lost his wife, his kids, and his home in one day. He checked into the mental hospital and died six weeks later a broken hearted man. He was buried with only a number on a stake to mark his earthly presence. His identity has been restored and his body claimed and buried by family.
Restoring and reclaiming the dead, giving them a story and a life, redeeming them from the grave; sounded like good news. The image of these thousands of unmarked, forgotten graves broke into my morning and reminded me of the promise of Christ to come again and take us to be with him. How many unknown, unclaimed, forgotten children of GOD will be claimed and restored to life on the day of resurrection? How many will be freed from the grave?
Death will be swallowed up in victory. I guess I am struck by the possibility that GOD might raise to life all of those unnamed, forgotten victims, all those nameless dead. To us, nameless. But not to GOD. "For I have called you by name, you are mine, says the LORD. Bud Merrit's story is a gospel story. The Kingdom of GOD is like a man who happened upon an old, forgotten grave yard. Upon finding it, he did not abandon the dead, but sought to give them names and stories and to remember them into conscious existence, as if they might speak to us. At the last day, all will be remembered, restored, named, and given life.