The Walking Dead in Need of Grace
by Donavon L Riley

We’ve all felt it—this craving for glory, this deep thirst for the spotlight. We wrap ourselves in our own cleverness, convinced we are the center of the world. Our opinions become sacred, our decisions untouchable. We demand others see us in the light we’ve crafted, a light far brighter than the truth allows. But here’s the catch: that hunger for recognition, for self-importance, is poison to the soul. It kills the real work of the Spirit, cuts it off at the root. Even the faintest trace of pride becomes a barrier, a wall that blocks the flow of true Wisdom. And so God, in His strange mercy, allows us to stumble, lets the ground slip beneath our feet. He cracks open our armor, not to destroy, but to reveal what’s been hiding underneath all along. We are flawed. We are vulnerable. We are, in the rawest sense, the walking dead in need of grace.

Look at Peter, that proud disciple who swore he’d never fall. He needed to be broken, needed to feel the bitterness of denial, to taste the ashes of his own fragility. Three times he denied his Lord, each denial a chisel striking away at the illusion of his strength. Only then, only in that collapse, could he see clearly what he really was: not a hero, but a man in desperate need of redemption. This is how God works. He lets us fall because only in the fall do we see the truth of ourselves. It’s not cruelty, it’s kindness. It’s the kind of kindness that strips away all pretense.

And then there’s St. Paul—he soared higher than most, lifted to the third heaven, shown mysteries that could burn the eyes out of any mortal. But what did God do? He gave him a thorn, a constant, gnawing reminder that no matter how high he’d flown, his strength was borrowed. That thorn was the ground tethering him to reality, keeping him from the pride that so easily takes root. It forced him to boast not in what he’d seen, but in his weakness. It was the thorn that kept him close to Christ, not the visions. That’s where the real work happens—in the affliction, in the breaking down of our illusions.

We need those thorns. Without them, we float away on the winds of self-deception, convinced we are more than we are. The blows to our ego, the cracks in our image—they hurt, but they are necessary. They remind us that we aren’t the center of this story. We aren’t the heroes. Jesus is. Our role is not to conquer, but to surrender. To be broken so that we might finally be healed, even into eternal life. Only in that surrender, in that brokenness and deadness, does the soul finally become a vessel ready to receive what God has been offering all along.