Come Alive

by Wesley Rowell

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” — Howard Thurman

 

I learned recently that years ago, this Howard Thurman quote actually hung from one of Calvary’s banners outside on 2nd Street. That feels just right to me. A church declaring to everyone passing by: what God wants for you is not just duty or survival, but life, real life, abundant life, life that makes you come alive.

 

And I see glimpses of that aliveness all the time here at Calvary. I see it in the choir, when voices blend and hearts lift in worship. I see it in the altar and flower guilds, in the quiet beauty of linens and candles and vessels prepared with care, and when creativity bursts into color on the altar. I see it in Bible studies and pub theology, when conversation opens into laughter or silence or sudden recognition of God’s presence. I see it when we gather with our neighbors, sharing food, dignity, and love.

 

Yes, all of this is the right thing to do. These are acts of service, faith, and justice. But maybe what’s even more important is how they light us up from the inside out. Maybe the truest measure of ministry isn’t simply its usefulness, but whether it awakens the God-given spark of the Holy Spirit in us, whether it makes us come alive.

 

This is the heart of Howard Thurman’s theology. He was a mystic, theologian, and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., and he believed with his whole being that life itself is alive because God is alive in it. Thurman wrote, “For as long as I can remember, I have felt and then thought my way into the aliveness of life itself. I cannot express the immense significance to me that life itself cannot die. Such an awareness has inspired the integrity of my every effort.”

 

This was not just a poetic turn of phrase for Thurman. It was the way he understood the universe: every atom, every star, every human life participating in God’s eternal vitality. Even death, he said, could not undo this aliveness. “I die. You die. Your child dies. But life does not die. The creatures of this earth attest to the aliveness of life in a million manifest forms. I am at ease knowing that nobody like me ever lived before. I am at ease because there is a nonspatial and nontemporal dimension of my personality that has to do with life and is not bound by death.”

 

Imagine that: being at ease not only with life but with death, because even in our dying, we are still participants in the aliveness of God. That’s why Thurman’s famous “come alive” quote isn’t just good advice for finding your passion or chasing joy. It is an invitation to align ourselves with the deepest truth of the universe: that life itself is alive, and that to come alive in ourselves is to manifest the abundant life Jesus promised.

 

Which brings me back to Calvary. Every time we choose to serve, every time we risk creativity, every time we stretch ourselves in love, we are joining in that indestructible aliveness. It’s not just about filling a slot on a schedule or meeting a need in the community. It’s about stepping into the abundant life of God, right here and now.

 

So maybe that banner on 2nd Street still hangs, in a way, not in fabric but in us. Every time we dare to sing, to serve, to study, to love, to shine, we are proclaiming again: life itself is alive.

 

And maybe the most faithful thing we can do is simply this: ask what makes us come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs, what the church needs, what God longs for, is people who are fully, radiantly alive.

 

“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” — John 10:10