Life from Death

Looking through my photos the other day I found a picture I had taken a few summers ago. I snapped it because it was so unusual. On our side porch where the concrete pad meets the brick wall a petunia plant had grown up and blossomed with vibrant pink flowers. This beautiful gift from God had sprung up from a crack in the barren, dead concrete.

Yesterday morning as we sat in church celebrating communion, I couldn’t help but reflect on the gospel story how God, being rich in mercy, could love us so much that He would set in motion a plan to make us alive together in Christ. When Adam and Eve first disobeyed God’s command in the Garden of Eden, sin entered the world and death by sin. From then on humans began to experience not only physical death, but also the more devastating spiritual death–separation from God. Adam and Eve must have felt sick when they realized all they had forfeited by their disobedience, but God came to them in their despair and promised a way out for them and for the world.

I am sure as they felt the effects of death, they probably wondered how God could restore life out of the mess they had made. But God did just that by sending His Son to take the punishment for their sins on the cross – and then He came back to life at the resurrection.

Can God bring life where there seems to be none?

Can He place beautiful pink flowers in a crack in the cement? You bet He can!