Dead, Then Suddenly Alive

Do you know what it feels like to be lost in a wrong you cannot fix?

Maybe you broke something that mattered. Maybe you said the cruel thing on purpose, and then you wished you hadn't. And the wishing didn't help. The broken thing stayed broken. The mean words stayed said.

There is a feeling deep down inside that whispers, You are too far gone now. There is no coming back from this.

A long time ago, a man named Paul sat down to write a letter to people who felt exactly that way. They knew, way down low, that something inside them was broken and could not be mended.

Paul did not pretend it wasn't true.

He told them something hard first. He said: you were dead.

Not sleeping and not sick, but dead, as dead as a dry stick on the ground that cannot make itself green, as still as a stone that cannot make itself sing. That is what our wrong does to us, little one. It makes us unable. We cannot reach up and fix ourselves. We cannot try hard enough. A dead thing cannot try at all.

If the letter stopped right there, it would be the saddest letter in the whole world.

But it does not stop there.

Because Paul writes two of the most wonderful words you will ever hear. He writes:

But God.

You were dead... but God.

You could not climb up to him... but God came down.

God is rich in mercy. He has so much kindness that it spills over and over and never runs dry. And his love for you is great, so great, greater than the deepest wrong you could ever do.

So while you were still a dead and broken thing, God did not stand far off and frown.

He bent down close.

And he made you alive.

He made you alive the very same way he made Jesus alive, when Jesus rose up out of the grave on that bright morning. Up out of the dark. Up out of the death. Up into the light, with the warm sun on his face.

That is what God wanted to do for you all along. That was his heart.

And you did not earn it. You could not. It was a gift, wrapped up and handed to you, free, the way you hand a present to someone you love just because you love them.

You don't pay for a gift. You just open your hands.

So if that feeling ever whispers again, you are too far gone, you can answer it now.

You can say: But God.

The rescue you needed could never come from you. It came down from heaven on a rescuing God who would not leave a single one of his children in the dark. He came to make you alive, and he did.

Now look down at your own two hands, warm and moving and yours. God made those hands alive for good things he planned for you long before you were born. Somewhere today there is a kindness that only you will do, and he has been waiting a very long while to watch you do it.