Not far from my house is a piece of old road that is no longer in use. It was once paved, and cars and trucks passed over it all day long. Now it has been replaced by a new road. Not long after this old road went out of use, it began to have small cracks in it. After a time the cracks got wider and wider. They were made wider by small bits of grass and other plants whose seeds had fallen into those small cracks.
Ever since I was a child I have marveled at how something as small and unassuming as a blade of grass can push aside asphalt and cement. For many years now this has been for me a symbol of the power of the resurrection life of Jesus working in the believer.
Once when I went looking for places in the Old Testament where the resurrection of the Messiah is predicted for the third day, I was blessed to find that it was on the third day of creation that God created grass and plants. For me it was a powerful symbol that the first life to come out of the ground was on the third day.
Paul tells us in these verses in Ephesians that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead on that third day is the power that works in us. We have been raised with him to new life, and the power of the most awesome event in the history of the universe-the resurrection of Jesus-is available to me as I seek to live in obedience to the word of God and the principles of his kingdom.
It is not a bombastic kind of power that makes a lot of noise and draws attention to itself. It is more like the steady, unfailing power that is in the life of that blade of grass as it slowly but surely breaks up the pavement.
- 14 APRIL -