Walking the streets of Thessaloniki is quite a treat. Bustling shoppers, street owners with loud voices are calling back and forth, in what would assume to be a regular city. But deeply seeped in the foundation of the city is history rich with truth.

The apostle Paul preached a sermon in the city square to the Thessalonians and later wrote not one, but two letters to the Thessalonian church. Today, walking on cobble stone streets past store keepers and busy shoppers are ruins from ancient times. In the middle of the city there are ancient pillars and stones and walkways preserved from years long ago. The ruins are old, decrepit, forgotten. But the city is alive.

The juxtaposition between the two worlds is simply proof that life can resurrect from ruins, from the forgotten, from the damaged.

***

On stage she swayed back and forth to the melody we sung. Her hand raised high, worshipping with full abandonment, she sang with a conviction unknown to many; a conviction that only comes through experience.

I’ll walk through the fire
With my head lifted high
And my spirit revived in Your story
And I’ll look to the cross
As my failure is lost
In the light of Your glorious grace

Let the ruins come to life
In the beauty of Your Name
Rising up from the ashes
God forever You reign

As I watched her sing Glorious Ruins to the Giver of Life, I swallowed back the emotion in my chest. In a city where old and new converge, life and death prevail, defeat washed away by victory, I watched the redemption of a life take place in a city that celebrates ruins coming to life.

Let the ruins come to life
In the beauty of Your Name
Rising up from the ashes
God forever You reign

A girl who’s life was taken away from her, robbed of innocence, hope, and life, stood on stage and sang with a conviction only known through experience. At the hands of sin, evil prevailed leaving her life nothing but ruins, forgotten and damaged. Day after day, week after week, month after month, her life was expensed as a commodity for gain, discarded at will, abandoned by choice. 

But God—our great redeemer—rescued her from the grip of slavery and before a great witness of believers, we saw ruins come to life. We saw the power of redemption transform what was once dead into full life. And there, in that moment, a body of believers standing on historic grounds were led in worshipping God by a woman creating a new history. A history of transformation revealing that life and truth and good can come from what was dead and evil and lies.

Thessaloniki may be thousands of miles away, but in our communities, in our cubicles, in our colleges, and on our campuses, there are ruins begging to come to life. And they can. There is no stronghold too big, no evil too strong, no darkness too pervasive to stop God from resurrecting life from death. I’ve seen it. I’m a witness. What is dead, can live again. As it is prophesied in Isaiah 61:

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.

May we as a people believe that ruins—Glorious Ruins—can one day live again.

Let the ruins come to life
In the beauty of Your Name
Rising up from the ashes
God forever You reign