Pause

Of all the things we believe to be true about the God we cannot see, the notion of being resurrected from the dead is the one thing that calls for complete faith.

Most people will grant that Jesus was right about how we should live our lives. But those unexplainable moments — a healing that mystifies medicine, a turn of events that seems to have no earthly explanation, a sunrise too beautiful for human understanding — remind us that, with God, all things are possible.

Taste and see how God’s acts of grace can strengthen our faith when we are in need of resurrection.

Listen

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

John 11:32-36

Think

Mary has faith. She knows with utter certainty that Jesus could have healed her brother Lazarus, and she tells Jesus so. We can imagine her tone, perhaps a little reproachful because he has healed perfect strangers but did not heal her beloved brother. Jesus is greatly disturbed and deeply moved by the loss his friends have suffered. He weeps for Lazarus’ death and the sisters’ grief. No one questions the depth of his love or the magnitude of his loss.

Yet in these moments before Jesus performs perhaps his greatest miracle, not one person in the crowd has an inkling of what is about to happen in the presence of God. When we might doubt God’s presence or compassion, this story is one to remember — that God comes to us even when we may doubt and think it’s too late to have our needs met.

Estelene Boratenski

Pray

Holy Spirit, thank you for this story of Jesus, who is deeply moved when we suffer loss. Help me to remember that God’s love for me is no less than Jesus’ love for Lazarus. Amen.

Go

Go now and offer comfort and grace to a world in need of resurrection, certain in the knowledge that the God who causes resurrection is with you.