Have you ever reached a place where you just want to wind the clock back and have a big do-over? Maybe you only want to wind it back five minutes because you just snapped at your kids. Maybe you’re wishing for a month or two or maybe a lifetime. Sometimes regret or disappointment just wash over you. But you would never think to ask God for that because you know it’s not realistic. You know he binds up broken things and strengthens feeble things and forgives all kinds of things, but God hasn’t been in the business of winding clocks back lately.

I was driving to pick up my husband from school this morning and had the kids’ Big Picture Story Bible CD playing on the stereo. The simple words felt profound: “The hours passed very slowly. Jesus’ friends cried. They had thought he was the king. But now their hearts were filled with sorrow, and their minds were filled with fear. ‘What happened?’ ‘Why did Jesus have to die?’ ‘Wasn’t Jesus God’s forever king?’ The questions kept coming until the next day turned into night. As Jesus’ followers tried to sleep, they thought, ‘We will be sad forever.'”

I am guessing that Jesus’ friends were wishing to wind the clocks back after he’d been laid in the tomb. I doubt it occurred to them to ask, any more than it occurs to us. Dead people don’t come to life again. You move on. But then suddenly there was Jesus, standing there with them. “The sadness they had felt was gone. Their hearts were glad again. Jesus was alive. Jesus really was alive. Jesus was risen from the dead.” You could say he wound the clock back, but it’d be more accurate to say he did far more than that, since in conquering death once he conquered it permanently, and now we live in this world where we don’t need clocks to go back because in having Christ, and in him the power of the resurrection, we have enough.

I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places…

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. –Ephesians