1 Peter 3:8-9 Finally, be all like-minded, compassionate, loving as brothers, tenderhearted, courteous, not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling; but instead blessing; knowing that to this were you called, that you may inherit a blessing.
As we approach Resurrection Day this Sunday, our hearts are drawn once again to the glorious mystery at the center of our faith—that death was not the end. On that first Resurrection morning, everything changed.
In the days of Yeshua (Jesus), the cross was an instrument of death, and crucifixion, a horrible method of torture. Over the next 200 years, in light of the Lord’s resurrection, the cross became identified with Christian faith and was transformed into a symbol of life and hope. Yeshua was able to turn it upside down, transforming an instrument of death into a symbol of life.
The tomb, a house of death where His body lay for three days, became the exact location where death was destroyed forever, replaced by resurrection life, an entirely new kind of life with no decay, sickness, or imperfection. In His death and resurrection, Yeshua inverted the very nature of biological reality and turned the tomb from a house of bones into an empty place of testimony to resurrection life. He turned it upside down!
This “inversion” of reality is a pattern of God’s activity. It is a “way” in which He works, a convention of Divine intervention into human affairs. And we ourselves are permanently invited to participate in this activity in innumerable ways.
Yeshua is, by His indwelling Spirit, through faith, giving us the authority, opportunity, and power to turn things upside down and inside out. Not indiscriminately, without His explicit guidance and direction, but through discernment, wisdom, and often real endurance, we experience and participate in turning tragedy into triumph, misery into joy, failure into success, mourning into dancing, and death into life. We turn curses into blessings, loss into gain, despair into hope, and even hatred into agape love! Praise God! For by His power and will, we too, can turn it upside down!
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy Devotions. This devotional was originally published on Worthy Devotions and was reproduced with permission.
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Thousands of people all over the world will celebrate Pesach (Passover) tonight, commemorating the day the Angel of Death passed over the Israelite slaves in Egypt, sparing their firstborn because the blood of a lamb was applied on their doorposts. Many believers in Yeshua (Jesus) also recognize this as the day that Messiah was crucified, offering Himself as the perfect Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, which reconciled man to His Maker, and restored them to close relationship.
In the Tenach (Old Testament), the Lord commanded Israel to count the Omer (the Barley Harvest) beginning the day after the sabbath during Passover, 50 days to the Biblical Festival of Shavuot (Pentecost). Today is the 4th day of the Omer and Shavuot is just a few weeks away…
Tomorrow night, thousands will begin celebrating the feast of Pesach (Passover), the day we remember God’s merciful redemption of the Jewish people from Egypt. When the final plague struck Pharoh and the Egyptians in Exodus, those who were spared were the ones who applied blood to their doorposts as God warned. Interestingly, the blood that God required them to apply then was the blood of a spotless, unblemished lamb.
In the parable of the unmerciful servant, the servant mistakenly thought that he could demand justice from another servant all the while asking mercy for himself from the king. When the king found out about this servant’s awful behavior, he became enraged and said to him “You wicked servant, I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to; couldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?”
I read a story about a new young partner in a law firm. The senior partners had set extremely high standards and had coached him carefully. He did well in some minor trials but he lost his first big case. When the partners reviewed the trial, they pointed out his errors and suggested different strategies. Even with all their critique, he lost the next big one. He felt terrible. Were they ready to give him the boot?
As Scotland was declaring its independence from England in the 1300’s, the English were hunting for Robert Bruce of Scotland in an attempt to prevent his accession to the Scottish throne. In the search, the English put Bruce’s own bloodhounds on his trail. As they grew closer to apprehending him, Robert the Bruce found a small river, and he said to his foster-brother who was with him, “Let us wade down this stream for a great way, instead of going straight across, and so these unhappy hounds will lose the scent; for if we were once clear of them, I should not be afraid of getting away from the pursuers.”
The first man was called “Ah-dom”, we know him as “Adam”. The word used for “man”, as in “mankind”, in Genesis 1, is also the same word – “Ah-dom”. “Ah-dom” is rooted in the three Hebrew letters, aleph-dalet-mem, and one of the Hebrew words for earth is “Adamah”, which contains the same three letters, however it ends with the Hebrew letter “hay”. “Adamah” means “red earth”, or “red clay”, and this word points to the natural earth elements, the “earth dust” that composed Adam’s body, and the body of every human being since. “Man” is “ah-dom”, in a very real sense, “clay”.