Unwrap and Walk

"Unbind him, and let him go." — John 11:44

I heard something at church recently that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

The speaker was talking about Lazarus — the moment Jesus called him out of the tomb. Lazarus walked out alive, but he was still wrapped in grave clothes. Still bound from head to toe in the linen of death. And Jesus said to the people standing there: unbind him. Let him go.

The image stopped me. Here is a man who has already been raised. The miracle has already happened. He is alive. And yet he is still wrapped in the thing that marked him as dead.

How many of us are walking around like that?

The grave clothes look different for each of us. For some it’s the weight of work that never ends. For others it’s financial pressure, the quiet anxiety that follows you from morning to night. It might be old guilt, or grief that won’t move, or simply the accumulated exhaustion of trying to keep everything together. These things are real. I don’t want to minimize them — the same pressure that feels manageable to one person can feel crushing to another, and I’m in no position to judge what anyone else is carrying.

But I think the question is worth sitting with: am I focused on the grave clothes, or on the one who called me out of the tomb?

There is a passage in 2 Corinthians 4 that I keep coming back to. Paul writes:

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” — 2 Corinthians 4:7–10

Jars of clay. Ordinary, fragile, unremarkable. That’s us. And yet — afflicted but not crushed. Perplexed but not in despair. The life of Jesus made visible in our ordinary bodies, on our ordinary days. Not because of how strong we are, but because of what we carry.

I write these things down in the good seasons partly because I want to remember them. Life has a way of shifting, and what feels clear and steady now may be harder to hold onto later. So I’m building a small collection of moments — things I’ve heard, things I’ve noticed, things that have anchored me — for the days when I might need reminding.

If you’re reading this in a hard season: you have already been called out of the tomb. The grave clothes are not who you are. You are allowed to walk.

Unbind yourself. And go.

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