Sunday - Life Is Coming- In Fact It's Here!

The Old Familiar Stories can be both dull and exciting. The dullness happens when we think we have heard it all before and there's nothing new to see. The excitement happens when we "get it" in a new way that applies eternally- and today. Sarah at Dylan's Lectionary Blog always seems to get it.

When we cry out from the depths, God hears. When Jesus seems slow in coming, he is coming nonetheless. And if we worry that it is too late, Jesus shows that it is never too late. After we have become convinced that all is lost, when we are ready to concede to death and are seeking only to contain the damage or bury it, Jesus demonstrates that there is no loss, no death, no tragedy, no depth, no power in heaven or on earth or under the earth that can place a person, a situation, or a world beyond God's redemption, beyond the reach of infinite love and abundant life.
--Dylan's Lectionary Blog

That paragraph is nothing short of powerful and life-changing. Go ahead, read it again. Did you catch it again. I have read and re-read it several times in these past days as I put this post together.

When we become convinced that all is lost...

When we are ready to concede to death...

We seek only to contain or bury the damage...

Sounds like a Friday on a Cross or, perhaps more powerfully and poignantly, a Sunday morning in the garden by The Tomb.

Sounds like many a day that most of us humans face when things don't look or feel or go right.

Sounds like the way of the world we live in- a place of death and darkness and the temptation to throw our hands in the air and give in or up.

And there was Lazarus. As good a metaphor for all this as anyone could ever want. But to Mary and Martha he was anything but a metaphor. And to Jesus he was a friend. Life is not a metaphor. Activities are similes to be used only as illustrations. Not when the healing power of God is at hand, or when the light is beginning to dawn. The metaphor becomes real. It isn't "like" anything else. It IS something else that we can only begin to grasp.

Which moves us to be those who live in the light. We become the carriers of that light. And no matter what, darkness does not cover light. It can never, ever, be more powerful than light.

So, as Sarah ended her post:

Open every dark place to light and air; this is the time to uncover and unbind!