There are seasons when certain elements of our lives will begin to decompose before our eyes. Relationships die and begin to decompose. Ways of thinking can decompose along with aspects of our faith built upon assumption or misunderstanding. This process of decomposition is part of life. It is never welcomed or comfortable. Only when we see the transformation of those dead things into a place of resurrection life are we able to see the larger work of God that has been taking place in the process of rot and decay. 

The prefix “de” redefines a word. It infers the opposite of the verb it is influencing as in decomposing what had been previously composed. Chemically, when something decomposes it enters a process that breaks down its elements separating its substance into simpler compounds. For example, when leaves fall from a tree to the forest floor in the transition from summer to fall that death is part of the process required for the dead leaves to become a life-giving mulch. The same is true in spiritual matters. 

God can turn a process of death – the death of hope or the death of a cherished relationship – into a new and resurrected beginning. What was thought to be lost forever was simply a reconstitution of an area in our life into something simple and purposeful.

Many of us composed a way of life we thought was important or valuable when in fact it was not the complete truth and only a construct of our yet-to-be healed life and its old way of thinking. When the Spirit entered those dying places, He began to de-compose the dead places in our lives so that He could re-compose us into a testimony of the resurrection power of God.  

Whenever decomposition is taking place, God is always at work behind the process of visible death and decay creating something beautiful not yet seen while we were still in the process of decomposition. If we can trust Him with the process of re-composition we will be amazed at what comes as He recomposes our lives. With God, death is never the end no matter how painful or unpleasant the process of death might appear.