Louis Zamperini survived forty-seven days adrift on a raft in the Pacific Ocean, then spent two years being beaten and starved in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. When the war ended and he came home, the world called him a hero. But at home behind closed doors, he was falling apart. The nightmares came every night — he would wake up soaked in sweat, reliving the face of his chief torturer. He started drinking heavily to dull the memories. His marriage was crumbling. The man who had survived sharks and starvation and torture was being destroyed by what was happening inside his own head.

In 1949 his wife Cynthia attended one of Billy Graham's evangelistic meetings in Los Angeles and came home a changed woman. She convinced Louis to go. He resisted the first night, walked out halfway through. The second night he sat through the whole thing. When the invitation came, something broke open in him. He walked forward, got on his knees, and gave his life to Christ. He described what happened next with a simplicity that is hard to argue with: "While I was still on my knees, I knew there was a change. It happened within seconds. I felt a perfect calm. I knew I was through with drinking." He went home that night and slept without a nightmare for the first time in four years. He never had another one. The hatred he had carried for his torturers dissolved completely. A year later he traveled to Japan, walked into Sugamo Prison, and embraced the guards who had beaten him. Some of them became Christians. Louis Zamperini spent the rest of his life — he lived to ninety-seven — telling anyone who would listen that what the Bible says about new creation is not poetry. It is fact.

Old things passed away. All things became new. Not gradually, not partially — the nightmares, the drinking, the hatred, all of it gone in one night on his knees. That is resurrection power. It does not always look like that — but it is never less than real transformation.

Prayer: Lord, thank You for Louis Zamperini's story and for every story like it. Where we have been carrying things we cannot seem to put down, do in us what only You can do. Make us new. Amen.