Nine Days in the Dark

On July 2, 2018, British diver John Volanthen surfaced inside a flooded chamber deep within Tham Luang cave in northern Thailand. For nine days, the world had assumed the worst about twelve boys and their soccer coach, sealed behind millions of gallons of monsoon water in absolute darkness. Rescue teams had gathered at the cave mouth the way mourners gather at a grave — hoping against hope, but quietly preparing for grief.

Then Volanthen's headlamp cut through the blackness, and he counted thirteen gaunt faces blinking back at him from a muddy ledge. His voice broke the silence with three words heard around the world: "They're all alive."

Outside, the news traveled like wildfire. Parents who had been weeping collapsed again — this time from joy so fierce it felt almost like pain. Reporters who had been composing eulogies scrambled to rewrite everything. The whole story had changed in an instant.

Matthew tells us the women went to the tomb at dawn carrying the same weight every mourner carries — the dull certainty that death has the final word. But an angel met them with news that rewrote everything: "He is not here; He has risen." And they ran from that garden tomb with what Scripture calls "fear and great joy," two emotions that seem impossible together until you have actually lived the moment when someone you love is unexpectedly, impossibly alive.

The resurrection is not a doctrine to be debated. It is news to be delivered — breathlessly, trembling, barely believing your own mouth as you say it: He is alive.