Along Came Jesus

 "When He had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!' The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped in strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, 'Take off the grave clothes and let him go.'" John 11:43, 44

    Yesterday, my daughter and I went to the Mummies of the World exhibit in downtown Cleveland. There were Egyptian mummies, Incan mummy bundles and even a few small preserved animals. Some bodies were intentionally mummified whereas others ostensibly died unnoticed and were preserved by just the right environmental conditions. One educational exhibit demonstrated the process of decomposition in which the viewer was shown the grim stages of decay that followed death.

    As we ambled along, peering at the rather gruesome displays, my mind went back to the story of Lazarus, as found in John's gospel, chapter eleven. Having been dead for four days, wrapped in strips of linen mingled with the customary spices, Lazarus was dead - no doubt about it. Mourners wailed. Relatives sobbed. The life of Lazarus was over.

    Or was it?

    Along came Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, whose loud command brought forth his friend from the grave. Praise be to God, the cords of death, which have strangled creation from the Fall of mankind, have been cut. The prison bars have been pried open by the only One who has the authority to do so. 

    Do you know, if the souls who had inhabited those mummies in the exhibit died in Christ, they will rise again? Can you imagine if Jesus had returned while I was touring that gallery, I would have seen those petrified people breathe anew and rise from those glass cases? "Unbelievable!" you say? Read God's word:

"For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore, encourage one another with these words." (1 Thessalonians 4: 16-18)

    Perhaps those mourners, who had surrounded the grave of Lazarus that day in Bethany, had trouble believing what they saw, but whether they believed it or not does not alter the truth of the matter: Jesus has broken the power of the grave. 

"I will deliver this people from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?" Hosea 13:14