Resurrection in the Ruins

The Reverend Kay Dennis, Deacon

Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast

Walk through any town after a hurricane, or any neighborhood after a fire, and you will see a sight that Scripture knows well: ruins. Shattered windows, toppled walls, twisted beams—the remains of what once promised shelter and safety. In the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, these are images this town knows all too well. The ruin is not only material. It is spiritual. To stand in the rubble of what was once home or sanctuary is to feel disoriented, even abandoned.

But the Bible is full of ruins. The people of God have never lived untouched by devastation. Jerusalem was sacked, its temple razed, its people carried into exile. The psalmist laments, “By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion” (Psalm 137:1). Isaiah cries, “Your holy cities have become a wilderness… our holy and beautiful house, where our ancestors praised you, has been burned by fire” (Isaiah 64:10–11). The ruins are real, and the grief is real.

Yet within this very grief lies the astonishing claim of the Gospel: God does not abandon ruins. God brings life out of death. God raises what has been destroyed.

This pattern is written into the very heart of our faith. The cross was a place of ultimate ruin—an instrument of state-sanctioned terror, designed to erase hope. And yet from the cross came resurrection. Not resuscitation, not a return to how things once were, but a new creation. The risen Christ bore the wounds of the cross but was no longer captive to them.

So, it is with us. When devastation comes—whether by disaster, betrayal, illness, or loss—the Christian hope is not naïve optimism, as if things will simply “go back to normal.” The hope is resurrection: God making something new from what seems beyond repair.

I think of a congregation whose building was destroyed by fire. For months, they met in a school gymnasium. At first, it felt temporary and humiliating. But over time, something surprising happened: they found themselves freer, more open to newcomers, more willing to experiment with ministries they had never considered. The fire had reduced their sanctuary to ashes, but it also stripped away complacency. In the ruins, God was already preparing a new creation.

Or consider the personal ruins—relationships broken, careers ended, health diminished. Often, in such places, something deeper emerges: a new tenderness, a new solidarity with others who suffer, a new dependence on the mercy of God. Resurrection rarely looks like restoration to what was. It looks like transformation into what could not have been imagined before.

This is why Paul can say, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Notice the present tense. Resurrection is not only a future event but a reality breaking in even now. The Spirit plants signs of life in the rubble—acts of kindness, reconciled friendships, unexpected courage.

To recover faith in resurrection is not to deny the reality of ruins. It is to look straight at them and still declare, with trust deeper than sight: “The Lord is risen indeed.” For Christians, this is not wishful thinking but the shape of reality itself. Death does not have the last word.

So, when we stand in the ruins—whether of a city, a church, or a life—we are not abandoned. We are standing in the very place where God’s new creation may already be stirring.

For the Gospel tells us that resurrection does not bypass ruins. It begins there.