Wounded, Risen One by Rebecca Merrill Groothuis Your body stretched and wretched draped upon the instrument of your death. Your soul plummeting precipitously, spinning in the dizzying darkness. A hell you’d never known, and could not have imagined; The claustrophobic horror of the howling black night, the consuming stench of death; The deep narrow light-less place of sin that is not your own. You never knew it could be like this; you can hardly breathe. You feel your heart tear open, a deep, jagged break through the center. “Oh no, oh God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But God did not abandon you in the pit, the pain, of a sin not your own. Miraculously your soul returned to the light (though death had been so utterly complete); your wretchedness moved behind you; night gave way to dawn. Life resurrected. As the fresh, clean scent of morning fills your lungs, you wonder—had you, just the other night, been breathing the stale filth of hell’s depths? Your fingers reach for your side, your palms. In your soul you feel the long scar where the wound had gaped and bled but now was clean and closed. Knowing the past you leave the past and press ahead to the new thing that your God, my God, is doing: cleaning and closing the wounds of our separation from your holiness, drawing us into purity and maturity —resurrection life! Yet you remember —you will always remember— the dark night of your wounding. For it changes everything. And through the haze of its pain a new light now shines. Groothuis, D., & Wolterstorff, N. (2017). Walking Through Twilight: A Wife’s Illness—A Philosopher's Lament. IVP.