First Light on Joplin

On May 22, 2011, the sun rose over Joplin, Missouri, and revealed a mile-wide scar. An EF5 tornado had carved through the city the evening before, killing 158 people and leveling entire neighborhoods. St. John's Regional Medical Center lay in ruins. Houses were reduced to concrete slabs.

That morning, Mark and Lisa Lindquist drove back toward their home on South Connecticut Avenue. Lisa gripped the dashboard and wept. They had fled with nothing but their dog and a photo album. Every report said their street was gone. They were driving toward a grave.

But when they turned the corner, their house — battered, roofless, leaning — was standing. And on the front porch, a neighbor named Dale Rankins had already nailed a blue tarp over the exposed beams. He had dragged fallen branches off the driveway. He looked up and said four words: "It's still here. Come see."

Lisa fell to her knees on the lawn. She had come expecting to mourn. Instead, she found someone had arrived before her and already begun the work of restoration.

That is the rhythm of Matthew 28. The women set out for a tomb at dawn, carrying spices for a dead body. They came to grieve. But God had gotten there first. The stone was moved, the grave was open, and a messenger waited with the most staggering words in human history: "He is not here; He has risen. Come and see."

You may be walking toward something you believe is finished. The Almighty is already there, rolling stones.