Live

" A man from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha, had taken sick. The sisters sent word to Jesus: 'Lord, the one you love is sick.' On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 'Lord,' Martha said to Jesus, 'if you had been here, my brother would not have died.' Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.' [John 11: 1-2, 17-21].

This story has many of the elements of Jesus' own rising to eternal life after His crucifixion: the death of Lazarus, his laying in the tomb for more than a few days, Lazarus' tomb that is a cave with a stone laid acrosss the entrance, and Lazarus' release from the the linen shroud and his resurrection from death. This is a foreshadowing of Jesus' own resurrection and our Easter joy!

Jesus says to Martha, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the Glory of God?" And he says to his Father, " I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that You [God] sent me."

To resurrect means to "restore to life, to reanimate, to bring to view again that which was lost."  How much can we modern people believe in our own Resurrection?

Throughout my life, I have been "saved", literally, many times!

While I was being born, I almost died. This is obviously not an event I remember. But when my relatives told me this story after I reached young adulthood, my immediate response was, 'There IS a God and He reached down to make sure I was born. So I must have some purpose!' I was given a life.

When I was about four, I jumped into a neighbor's pool and sank down, down, down, but my feet could not find the bottom. I thought, This is what it is like to drown! My mother's arms pulled me out. I coughed up a lot of water and began to breathe again.

When I was in high school, I was home alone one evening, and there was a prowler in the neighborhood. Later the police found our trash can overturned underneath the kitchen window. When my parents came home, they found the police at the door. The officer said that I was "very lucky". Think of how I could have been injured or killed. I was "saved."

When I was in graduate school, I was the victim of a violent crime. I was passing away, losing consciousness at the hands of the attacker, but I prayed to God to save me. For no earthly reason, the attacker stopped and I was saved. Again.

After I was married only a few years, my husband was misdiagnosed with cancer. For about a week, we awaited the scheduling and results of a biopsy. If he did have this cancer, he would live only a few months. Then I would be alone. I waited in agony by the phone during the biopsy. Then the call came; it had been a shadow on the X-ray. It was not cancer, it was a benign calcium deposit. My husband was saved. I WAS saved! I wept for joy!

When our son was born, we ran into trouble, serious trouble. We almost lost him. But we regained him. He was saved. Our hearts were saved and not broken.

One day, I took my son to the park. A wind shear ripped through the trees and we became afraid. I put him in the wagon and we headed for home. Less than a block away from home, a huge maple tree snapped in half and was falling right for us! I hauled as hard as I could on the wagon and ran for our lives. The tree cleared us by a few feet. Live, downed wires were all around us. But, we were saved.

One summer day, I was out in the yard weeding, but it was too hot and humid. So I cut short my gardening and came into the house.  Almost as soon as I got inside, a huge ash tree fell over, right where I had been standing! I was safe in the house!

You may think that I am making all this up, that so many near death experiences cannot possibly happen to one person! All of these are true stories!

You may think, How can one person possiby go through all this and not be depressed? Or angry?  Or paranoid?  The only way to get through these things is to focus, not on the death, but on the Redemption, the Resurrection.

 Someone very wise said to me, " You have a lot of Redemption in your life!" NOT, 'You have a lot of death, drowning, crime, cancer, loss, violent storms and deadly trees in your life!' We cannot deny the harshness of life. Yes, we have to feel the pain of our trials,to process and understand the crises in our lives. But we do not need to DWELL in that dark place of loss and violence and sin. If we do, that is not Life. It is dying a little more every day!

This wise person also said to me, "The early Christians had such joy, that people thought they were drunk!" I shook my head, How could that be?! In the early church, Jesus had died, the early Christians were persecuted, there were few followers, no churches in which to gather.

How? The joy comes, not from death and sin and catastrophe and turmoil. It comes after those trials. It comes with the Resurrection. It comes from believing that there is something Holy and True and Perfect and Sacred.

It comes from our Faith.

What is the Resurrection in your life? Your improved health, after your doctor cures you? The unconditional love of your spouse, after a difficult childhood?  Finding a job after the loss of the old one, when you feared when you would never work again? The birth of a child and the second chance to remake all the things that went so very wrong in your own childhood?

Think smaller: A sunrise? The coming of spring after a harsh winter?  Rest after a weary day?

Jesus, You ARE my Resurrection. You ARE my life! Let me see the saving power of your Presence all around me, the Light to banish my darkness!

(c) The Spiritual Devotional 2011. All Rights Reserved.