When Jesus Comes Late

{Attention, friends! I am moving on up in this world (or just over) to a wordpress blog. Same address, just different location. Same post on both blogs today.  
Walk with me from now on over at: thislifesblessings.wordpress.com }

I find myself again in one of those waiting seasons. Someone this summer said that waiting isn’t a season, it’s a lifestyle. I am not entirely sure I agree; I guess the more "seasons" of waiting I experience, the more truth that is.

All I know is that I am definitely waiting right now. Waiting for doors to open or close, or a clear path to emerge amidst the forest.

I’m waiting for God to “show up.” That is one of those phrases that Christians, especially Seminary students, go nuts over - - “God is always with us, He doesn’t just show up sometimes.” It is true. He is always here, always with us, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.

People have felt that way throughout history. Even when Jesus was physically here on earth people felt like He did not show up when they thought He should have.

Remember that story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead? Mary and Martha did not understand why Jesus came “late.” To them, it didn’t make sense. He knew Lazarus was sick, and yet He did not come until after Lazarus had died.

I love this story for so many reasons. One, it is a prime example of Jesus meeting people right where they are, and knowing their exact need. Martha came running to Jesus asking why He didn’t come sooner, and He answered her with truth and teaching. “Your brother will rise again…I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:23, 25 NIV). When Mary came to Him, weeping and questioning, He cried and mourned with her.

But mostly I love this story because it shows us the beauty of God’s timing. What seemed like Jesus showing up late became one of the best stories in the Bible.

By coming “late" - meaning after Lazarus died - Mary and Martha (and everyone else involved) were made witnesses to a miracle, their faith was increased, and a greater story was told than if Jesus had come before Lazarus died.

Before this, no one would have believed that Lazarus could be raised from the dead. They believed that he was dead and gone. Jesus used this situation to make them all witnesses of a miracle. He raised him from the dead! Sometimes we read these stories so many times we are desensitized to the miraculous. Lazarus was literally in the grave, wrapped in his linen grave-clothes. They were eyewitnesses to one of the greatest miracles ever performed.

Can you imagine the faith you would have if Jesus raised someone you loved from the dead? Mary and Martha must have had incredibly confidence in Jesus after that day. If He can raise our brother from the dead, what can’t He do? (Certainly they would have more faith in His statement that He is the resurrection and the life.)

If Jesus had come just a few days earlier, He could have healed Lazarus from his sickness, and it would have been great. Mary and Martha would have been grateful. People might think it was because Jesus healed Him, but there would certainly be a majority of people who would attribute it to his health taking a turn for the better, herbal remedies, or any other number of reasons people suddenly get over a sickness.

But He didn’t. He came when Lazarus had already died. He told a story that was beyond anything they could have imagined, because there was no other explanation other than that Jesus raised him from the dead. The story goes down in history as one of the few times a human came back from the dead.

So I’ve been thinking about this. How angry Mary and Martha must have been that Jesus showed up “late.” We think that all the time, don’t we? Where are you God? Do you even see me? If you cared, you would have shown up already.

But what if it’s the same reasons for us? What if God’s timing seems last minute to us, but really He is increasing our faith? What if He is making us witnesses to miracles? You can be dang sure that He is writing out a story that is a million times better than the one we would write ourselves.

I’m trying to believe this for my story. I'm trying to believe that God’s timing is not late, it is in fact the perfect timing. His is the only timing that would work, that I can handle.

He holds each of us in His hands. If we trust in the faithfulness of God that we have seen in the past, we can know that we are not only His Beloved, but are characters in an amazing story, being shaped and molded and bearing witness to His miracles.

The Process of Becoming

[An excerpt from my graduate thesis: The Resurrected Self: Finding our True Identity in Christ]

The statement can be made without much argument that the majority of people walk through life half-alive, if not completely dead.  We live captive to our sin and brokenness, or fighting to simply sludge through the days trying to survive.  It is clear from Scripture, as we have seen, that God calls us to be alive.  Since He gives us this call, there is reason to believe that it is possible.  He would not call us to something or promise something that was not achievable.  Verses such as John 10:10, “I have come that they might have life, and life to the full,” promise us that life in Jesus means to be fully alive.  Colossians 2:13, “When you were dead in your sin…God made you alive with Christ,” lays out for us the idea of the Resurrected Self.  Before being resurrected with Christ, we were dead in our sin.  Now that we have been raised with Him, being made co-heirs with Christ, we are not only saved but also awakened to live fully and be who God originally intended for us to be.  David Benner speaks of this idea of awakening and becoming in his book Spirituality and the Awakening Self.

“All things are not only sustained by God; but all things are also being made new in Christ. All things are being liberated and restored – becoming more than they are, becoming all they were intended to be in their fullness in Christ.”[1]  He discusses a “theology of becoming.”  It is a journey that God invites us on in order to find the fullness of life that He intended for us.  We need to push back against the reality that so many people walk through life half-awake, and help one another engage in the transformation and awakening into which God draws us.

We struggle to believe that real transformation is possible.  It is easy to go through life thinking that change is a futile attempt and that God is too distant to care.  Paul resists this in Acts 17:27-28: “He is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being.”  Not only is He near us, He gives us our very life.  “It is we who fail to notice divine presence. It’s all a matter of awareness.”[2]  This awakening, Benner says, is what Jesus described as being “born again.”[3] 

Becoming and living out who God created us to be is not only of benefit to us, it is a worshipful and obedient act to God.  “A tree gives glory to God by being a tree.”[4]  The more we are who God designed us to be, the more glory we give Him and the more we reflect His Image.

While we are from the moment of our birth the person that God designed, there is a process of becoming in which we partake.  Because of sin and brokenness, our sinful human nature keeps us from naturally being the person that God created.  We have to engage in the process of sanctification and resurrection.  These steps are available to us because of what God has done throughout history for us.  Through the covenant, the crucifixion and resurrection God has not only made salvation possible but has opened the door for us to walk into new life and become who He originally intended us to be. 

Just as a butterfly must shed its cocoon in order to fly, so we must go through the process of becoming who we truly are.  A caterpillar that stayed a caterpillar would be wasting its full potential.  We think that we would rather remain the way we are, that we are just fine with the life we have now.  If only we could know, like the butterfly, that transformation will bring us into a new life more incredible than anything we could have ever imagined. 

It is a journey of discovery.  Like a sacred treasure hunt, God is revealing more and more of who He is and who we are in Him.  As we walk more into the process of sanctification and experience God at deeper and deeper levels of intimacy we find ourselves becoming the holistic person that God desired.  He longs for us to unearth who we are in all its glory and fullness.

---

[1] David Benner, Spirituality and the Awakening Self.  (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2012), X.

[2] Ibid. 

[3] Ibid. 

[4] Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation. (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1961), 31.