The Man Who Lived in the Tombs

Across the lake there was a place where no one wanted to go. A lonely place, full of cold stone tombs where the dead were buried. And in that lonely place lived a man, all alone among the graves.

Something dark and terrible had gotten inside him. It made him scream, day and night. It made him hurt himself on the sharp stones. The people from the town had tried to hold him still. They wrapped chains around his arms and his legs. But he was too strong, or the dark thing was, and he snapped the chains like bits of string.

So they stopped trying. They left him out there. And the man lived among the tombs, crying out where no one came.

Everyone said he was too wild to chain, too frightening to go near, too far gone to help. No one even tried anymore.

But someone was coming.

Across the water, in a little boat, Jesus was crossing the lake. He had come straight through a storm to get there, the very storm he had hushed with two words. The wind and the waves had tried to stop him, and they could not, because Jesus had someone to find on the other side.

The boat touched the shore, and out from the tombs the man came, running and shrieking. Anyone else would have turned and rowed away as fast as they could. Jesus did not move. He looked at the screaming, bleeding, lonely man, and he saw one of his own. One he had crossed the whole lake to find.

"Come out of him," Jesus said to the dark thing inside.

And it had to obey. It begged. It pleaded. But it could not stay, not for one moment, not with Jesus standing there. Out it went, out and away, into a herd of pigs that rushed down the hill and into the sea. And the man was free.

When the townspeople came to look, they could hardly believe their eyes. The wild man of the tombs was sitting down, dressed and calm and himself again. The one no chain could ever hold was held now by something far stronger. He was held by Jesus.

The man did not want Jesus to leave. He climbed toward the boat. "Let me come with you," he begged. But Jesus had something even better for him. "Go home," Jesus said. "Go to your own people. Tell them how much God has done for you, and how kind he has been to you."

So the man went home. The one who had only ever screamed now had good news to carry. Up and down the towns he walked, telling everyone, Look what Jesus did for me.

There is no one too broken for Jesus. No one is too frightening, too lost, or too far across the lake. He crossed a whole storm for one man no one else would touch, and one day he would cross something far darker than any lake, and deeper than any storm, to set his whole family free and bring them safely home.

But the man from the tombs did not have to wait to be glad. Every morning he woke up clothed, and calm, and free. And every day he found someone new to tell.