Too Free to Move

When American soldiers liberated the Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945, they expected the prisoners to rush the gates. Many did not. Chaplain William Ninety-Fifth Infantry Division later described inmates standing motionless behind the wire, staring at their liberators with hollow eyes, unable to process what was happening. Some wept silently. Others turned away and shuffled back to their bunks. The news was too enormous for their starved bodies and shattered minds to absorb. Freedom had come, and they were terrified of it.

One survivor, a Polish schoolteacher named Stanisław, reportedly stood at the open gate for nearly an hour before stepping through it. He had rehearsed this moment a thousand times in his imagination. But the real thing overwhelmed every rehearsal. His legs would not obey what his ears had heard.

This is the strange, holy terror of Mark 16:8. The women came expecting death — spices in hand, grief heavy on their shoulders. Instead they found an empty tomb and an angel's announcement: "He has risen." And they fled. Trembling. Astonished. Silent. Not because they doubted, but because the news was bigger than anything they had prepared themselves to carry.

The Resurrection does not arrive as mild comfort. It arrives as an earthquake in the soul. Like prisoners blinking at open gates, we stand before the empty tomb and discover that the God who conquers death is almost too good to believe — until, trembling, we finally step through.