Our Hope at the Graveside

Lazarus was dead.

He was a human being, a brother and a friend. He didn’t die abruptly like in an accident, his death was the draining kind, illness slowly preceding death.

His family must have been around him when he died, hoping, praying that he’d get well. Mary and Martha must have done all they could, giving him all the food and medication they could get, yet he got worse. Then they reached out to their friend; Lazarus’s friend.

He had healed many people of all kinds of illnesses: acute and chronic, physical, psychiatric and spiritual. Surely he could heal their brother Lazarus. No, He would heal His friend Lazarus.

But alas, Jesus didn’t come on time, Lazarus died before He could say goodbye. In fact, Lazarus was buried before Jesus got to their home.

No wonder Martha rushed to Him accusingly when He got to their house, saying “if you'd been here, my brother wouldn't have died.”¹ She was already at the third stage of grief.

But she had hope; hope that she would see her brother alive someday.

Jesus could easily have consoled her and moved on, but He didn’t. When He told her that her brother would rise again she accepted that truth as a consolation, not a promise.

When Jesus speaks to us, He speaks to our present situations, and our current needs. His promises aren’t outdated banknotes or some futuristic currency that holds potential only, He expects us to listen and believe His words for now, as well as for the future. He said, “I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all.”²

While dead people coming back to life may not be as common as we would like, it’s because believing people are not as common as He would like.

God’s goodness is unencumbered by sickness, and unhindered by death. He can bring back from the dead anything that once lived, whether human life or circumstance. And He can do it right now!

Whatever pertains to you that once lived can live again, and indeed will live again, if you can answer the question He puts to you as He did to Mary. It’s in John 11:26. Check it out.

¹ Jn 11:21

² Jn 11:26