Could You Repeat That Please?

Have you ever started reading and saying to yourself, "Wow, what timing!  This is exactly what I needed to hear..." only to realize that you are actually rereading something that you have somehow forgotten that you read just a day or two before?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Nice.

Anyhow, this morning I reread a devotional excerpt that I had read just a few days before and didn't catch that I was rereading the excerpt from Monday or Tuesday until I was more than a paragraph or two into it and yet somehow,  it seemed to be just what the doctor ordered, for today.
So, I continued to reread the entire entry.

The thoughts were taken from John 11:21 where we read that Martha said to Jesus,

"Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

You see, when Martha and Mary's brother Lazarus had become ill, word had been sent to Jesus saying that the one that he loves, is sick!  The sisters had sent these words to Jesus anticipating that Jesus would drop what he'd been doing, come to them and that their brother would be healed, but Jesus had done nothing that they'd expected when he received the tragic news. In fact, Jesus showed up four days after the funeral! Their Lord had let them down.

The girls probably felt a little angry, disappointed and possibly even began to question why they had bothered to send word to Jesus in the first place.  They had believed that Jesus would come to their rescue but it seemed he had blown the chance to be there for them in the hour when they had needed him most.  But now comes the amazing part of the story.  The miracle that they had wanted to receive would actually grow pale in comparison to the one that they would get to receive.

Jesus stood in front of the tomb and told them to roll away the stone and called for Lazarus, smelly old burial clothes and all, to come forth.  After having been dead for four days, Lazarus woke to life.

When we pray, sometimes the circumstances of need that we bring to God in prayer seem to have only one good possible outcome and we wrap the entirety of our thinking around that one possibility that we can imagine helping our situation.  Sometimes, our prayers are not answered as we would like and we say to our disillusioned selves that maybe God doesn't care or maybe he never even heard us to begin with and we then begin to doubt the purpose of anything and everything that we've ever experienced in our faith life and we slowly begin drifting away from God.  After all, if he's there and if he really holds everything in the palm of his hand and has the power to move mountains, why doesn't he just fix every broken thing that we bring to him?

When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead many hearts were stirred and some who had not believed that he was who he said he was, began to believe.  A sick young man recovering might have been just another take two aspirin and call me in the morning type of healing news while someone being brought back to life, well, that was undeniably head turning and if you ask me,  quite faith affirming.

Sometimes our boxed in God has a big picture plan that our minimum faith charged minds can often not even begin to imagine.

Dear God, Sometimes I pray to you and I line up all of the requests and I line up all of the possible solutions to the requests and I pretty much might as well say to you that this prayer that I am praying is multiple choice.  "Here you go, God, I've made it easy for you.  Pick A, B,C or D and please do that within the time frame allotted for this test so that your answer will receive the credit it's due and boy, oh boy, God, will I ever give you the glory for the whichever right choice that you chose!"

Sometimes, God, I'm just so silly.  I put you in a box with a snug fitting lid and in the same breath say that you are awesome, that you exceed my expectations and that you are all knowing and all powerful.

I'm sorry that I do that to you, God.  You are awesome, you are amazing and all powerful and though I do not always understand why some of the things that seem as if they should work out the way that I can recognize as being good completely fail to come to be, I trust that you have an answer to every problem that will outshine even the very best possible, first choice scenario.  If I just trust that you will always do what is best for everyone, eventually, then I will get to see how incredibly amazing you really are and more than likely, so will somebody else who also needs to see.

By the way, thanks for giving me another day with yet another chance to understand your often mysterious, but oh so wonderful and ultimately loving, ways.

If you have a moment, click the link below and read John, Chapter 11 and allow God to give you your own very personal insight through the story of Lazarus.   If you'd like, there's a fun song to click on from a band,  Modest Mouse, called,  "One Chance" that always makes me think of how I need to let God be God sometimes and take the lid off of the box that I so often tend to tuck him into.  


This song from Modest Mouse isn't a Christian song or anything, but God often uses music, art, story lines and everything else I'd never expect to speak to my heart.  
God knows no limits.  
God is box-less.

http://www.newadvent.org/bible/joh011.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVSbZL9ToQM