Ben Still

Joseph of Arimathea pulled a corpse off a cross with his bare hands. Blood under his fingernails. The weight of a dead man sagging into his arms. He wrapped God in linen, pressed the fabric into wounds that were still wet. Nicodemus brought seventy-five pounds of burial spice. A king's funeral for a man the world just murdered. They carried Him into a hole in the rock and rolled the stone shut. And everything you've ever done went in with Him. Every night you can't sleep because of what you did. Every morning, you can't look in the mirror. The thing you did to her. The thing you did to them. The lie you've been carrying so long it feels like bone. The version of you that drinks alone and pretends tomorrow will be different. That man was buried with Christ. Stone sealed. Done. Not managed. Not in therapy. Not on a payment plan with God where you slowly earn your way back. Buried. In a tomb. Under rock. Gone. Three days of silence. Three days of a cold body in the dark. Then the stone moved. And when He walked out, the grave clothes were folded on the slab. He didn't stumble out tangled in death. He left it sitting there like a man who's done with the clothes he used to wear. Lazarus needed someone to unwrap him. Death still clung to him even after he was breathing. Jesus folded His own burial linen and walked out clean. That's the difference between religion and resurrection. Religion unwraps you slowly. Asks you to manage your sin. Attend the class. Read the book. Try harder next week. Resurrection says the man who walked into that tomb is dead. The man who walked out doesn't know him. You're not fixing the old you. The old you is in a sealed tomb in Jerusalem, and he's not coming back. The man reading this, the one who thinks he's too far gone, you're not too far. You're already buried. The funeral happened two thousand years ago. Now get up. The stone's already moved. The linen's already folded. Walk out.