Imagine walking thru a graveyard. There’s a dirt road thru the middle, and you walk on it. The winter air is cold as you breathe in, and your breath makes clouds in the air. Snow is falling lightly over the path, and the gravestones have a light sprinkling of white over them. You look down at them as you walk slowly, briefly gazing over the stone monuments.

Then, one stands out to you. It is a simple rectangular stone. Your boots

make footprints in the fresh snow as you walk over to it and kneel down beside it. You run your hand over the simple heading thoughtfully. Just a name and two dates. “She died 23 years ago,” you whisper into the air. You don’t know why you whisper. It just seems so, so…final. And helpless.

You imagine how she looked when she was your age, what her laugh sounded like, who she loved, how many tears she cried, her dreams, her hopes, her fears. She was real. But now, she is dead. Everything in her is dead. Buried in the ground. And the face that once held smiles and tears is now lifeless in the ground.

Cold and lifeless.

Just like we are without Jesus. “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” (Ephesians 2:1) Without Jesus, we lie in a graveyard. Dead. Helpless. Nothing. And we could do nothing to help ourselves. Nothing. “Apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

We were lost in darkest night, having no hope, without God in the world, blind sinners by nature, born in sin, enemies of God. We thought we knew the way, but we were really walking to our deaths. We danced with death, all the while believing we were dancing with life. We were dead corpses, deserving of and running to hell.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.” (Ephesians 2:4-5) This is God’s crazy love for us! He saw us when we were dead, and He loved us! He said, Hey, I’m gonna do something about this. And He did. He sent Jesus, to take our death, and to make us alive with Him!

The cross is what proved God’s love for us. (“God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we

might have eternal life through him.” I John 4:9 NLT) Once we were His enemy, now we are seated at His table. He made His enemy His friend! “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” (Romans 5:10) This is crazy.

And that is the crazy awesome story of God’s love toward us, that when we were dead in our sins, He made us alive with Him! We can live in Jesus! Alleluia! Thank you Jesus!!!

So that is all awesome and good, but if we don’t believe it or meditate on it, it’s pretty much like, “Wow great, yeah, God loves me.” Right. So this week, when you wake up and look in the mirror, say out loud: “God loves me a really lot.”

And believe it, because it’s true. You are dead without Jesus, but with Jesus, you are alive!

~Nicole Mellas