Daily Devotional
"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly."
John 10:10
Matthew tells us the two men came out of the tombs. In that region, tombs were often caves cut into the hillside, the dead buried in the back and the front chamber used as shelter. These men were not sheltering from a storm. They lived there. For a Jewish reader, a tomb was about the most unclean place on earth; touching a corpse made a person unclean for a week. Unclean spirits had driven these men to live in unclean places, and in a few verses those spirits will ask to enter unclean animals. Evil feels at home among death.
Mark fills in the picture. Chains could not hold one of these men. He cried out day and night and cut himself with stones (Mark 5:4-5). It is as though the demons were trying to erase the image of God that he bore (Genesis 1:27). That is what evil always aims at. It hates the image of God in you, and it works to deface what God made good. This man’s misery was a foretaste of hell itself.
We may not meet anyone coming out of a cemetery on the way home from church, but we are not as far from this scene as we think. C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters imagines a senior demon coaching his nephew, and one of the most effective strategies is simply to convince people that demons are not there. Many Christians practice a kind of pragmatic atheism: we say we believe in Satan, but we live as if he does not exist. Scripture never treats evil so casually. Like a casino with flashing lights and ringing bells, evil promises freedom, fun, and the thing you have always wanted. But the house always intends to win. The devil does not reward those who serve him; he only torments. He is never your friend.
Into that graveyard walked the one who came to give life. Jesus does not fear the tombs. He is about to empty one of his own.
Today's Challenge
Where are you tempted to live as though evil is not real? What "flashing lights" are currently promising you something that sin will never deliver? Are there ways you are at war with the image of God in yourself, through self-contempt, self-destruction, or despair? Who is one trusted person you could tell about it this week?
Prayer
Father, I confess that I often treat sin lightly and forget that I have a real enemy who wants to destroy me. Open my eyes to the lies I have been believing. Where I have been living among the tombs, call me out into the light. Thank you that I am made in your image and that Jesus came to restore what evil tries to ruin. Give me life, and life abundantly, in him. In Jesus' name, Amen.
