Where Be All the Splinters of Bone?

Do you believe in the resurrection of the body? Sometimes an old classic like the following from John Donne is helpful. Donne, [22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631] is known by many for his poems but as the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London his sermons are illuminating.

Where Be All the Splinters of Bone?

Where be all the splinters of that bone, which a shot hath shivered and scattered in the air?  Where be all the atoms of that flesh, which a corrosive hath eat away, or a consumption hath breathed, and exhaled away from our arms, and other limbs?  In what wrinkle, in what furrow, in what bowel of earth, lie all the grains of the ashes of a body burnt a thousand years since?  In what corner, in what ventricle of the sea, lies all the jelly of a body drowned in the general flood? 

What coherence, what sympathy, what dependence maintains any relation, any correspondence, between that arm that was lost in Europe, and that leg that was lost in Afrique or Asia, scores of years between?  … all dies, and all dries, and moulders into dust, and that dust is blown into the river, and that puddled water tumbled into the sea, and that ebbs and flows in infinite revolutions, and still, still God knows in what cabinet every seed-pearl lives, in what part of the world every grain of a man’s dust lies; and … he whispers, he hisses, he beckons for the bodies of his saints, and in the twinkling of an eye, that body that was scattered over all the elements is sat down at the

right hand of God, in glorious resurrection.

   – John Donne, The Resurrection of the Body, Sermon, 19 November, 1627