“Why this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but asleep.” –Mark 5:39
When we think resurrection, the Easter mystery is uppermost on the list. But there are also three stories of restored life in the Gospels. The most dramatic is that of Lazarus, who answers the call to come out of his tomb after four days. Yet he returns to the living without the slightest hint of the odor of death clinging to him. It’s as if decay knew it was not Lazarus’s time.
Another story of restored life involves the son of a widow in Nain. The widow’s journey to the grave with her son’s body is interrupted. Then death itself is interrupted. The final story concerns a twelve-year-old girl. On the cusp of her fertility, she’s captured by a fatal illness. Then the promise of her youth is returned to her. In each episode, Jesus insists that death is not God’s idea. God makes us to be strikingly, stunningly alive.
Are you fully alive? What aspects of your life seem to be “in the tomb,” on the way to the graveyard, or lifeless before the hour of full bloom?
LET US PRAY…
Lord, you know our needs even before we ask. Grant the nation we so love the spirit of humility, reverence, and service, that we may look to the needs of others before our own. Make us great in the way of justice, so that those who seek peace may find it on our shores. Amen.
While The Gospel at Home takes a break in the summer months, we’ll be drawing our weekly reflections from Exploring the Sunday Readings.
Image credit: Distant Shores Media/Sweet Publishing [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
