Tag: Jesus

Flowers of the Sad, Human Mind

September 26, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

In the high woods that crest our hills,
Upon a steep, rough slope of forest ground,
Where few flowers grow, sweet blooms today I found
Of the Autumn Crocus, blowing pale and fair.
Dim falls the sunlight there;
And a mild fragrance the lone thicket fills.

Languidly curved, the long white stems
Their purple flowers’ gold treasure scarce display:
Lost were their leaves since in the distant spring,

Their February sisters showed so gay.
Roses of June, ye too have followed fleet!
Forsaken now, and shaded as by thought,
As by the human shade of thought and dreams,
They bloom ‘mid the dark wood, whose air has wrought
With what soft nights and mornings of still dew!
Into their slender petals that clear hue,
Like paleness in fresh cheeks; a thing
On earth, I vowed, ne’er grew
More delicately pure, more shyly sweet.

Child of the pensive autumn woods!
So lovely, though thou dwell obscure and lone,
And though thy flush and gaiety be gone;
Say, among flowers of the sad, human mind,
Where shall I ever find
So rare a grace? in what shy solitudes?
~Robert Laurence Binyon “Autumn Crocus”

The late September emergence
of autumn crocus is always sudden,
rising up near the equinox
in the shade of spent peony bushes.

These rare blooms:
tall, tender, bold, and frail,
their incubation triggered by retreating light from above,
unlike their springtime cousins emerging through melting snow.

The autumn crocus waits with thoughtful temerity,
summoned forth from the soil
to remind us the end of summer
is not the end of them or us.

A luminous gift of hope and beauty
borne from a humble bulb;
plain and only soil-adorned.

Slowly unfurling on a pale leggy stem,
the tender lavender petals peel back
to reveal golden crowns of saffron,
brazenly blooming when all else is dying back.

Vulnerable to blustery wind and heavy rains,
they easily wilt, crushed, deeply bruised purple –
under the Sun’s reflection made manifest;
returning defeated, inglorious, fallen, to dust.

Yet we know – they remind us:
they (and we) will rise again.

…we know what is coming behind the crocus. The spring comes slowly down this way; but the great thing is that the corner has been turned. . . It remains with us to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.
C.S. Lewis from God in the Dock

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A Good Sound

September 25, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

(for Wendell)

From steady rain we step to sheltered ground
in the dark cathedral of the barn,
breathe in scents of damp wood and hay,
assume a reverent stillness.
The dog, with the sudden confidence
of one engaged, at last, in good work,
trots through the barn’s far doorway
heading seven white-faced ewe lambs.
Not knowing me, they halt, uncertain,
until you smoothly bucket corn
from storage to trough, and they—
as sheep will—follow where hunger leads.
Hard teeth crack dry kernels
in percussive counterpoint,
a muted consort mimicking the fall
of winter rain on wooden shingles.
In entiring darkness, we stand, until
from your post beneath the hayloft beams,
you turn to me, grinning, and say,
That’s a good sound. And it is.
~Brian Volck “Visiting”

Every now and then, I forget to turn off the lights in the barn. I usually notice just before I go to bed, when the farm’s boundaries seem to have drawn in close. That light makes the barn seem farther away than it is — a distance I’m going to have to travel before I sleep. The weather makes no difference. Neither does the time of year.

Usually, after turning out that forgotten barn light, I sit on the edge of the tractor bucket for a few minutes and let my eyes adjust to the night outside. City people always notice the darkness here, but it’s never very dark if you wait till your eyes owl out a little….I’m always glad to have to walk down to the barn in the night, and I always forget that it makes me glad. I heave on my coat, stomp into my barn boots and trudge down toward the barn light, muttering at myself. But then I sit in the dark, and I remember this gladness, and I walk back up to the gleaming house, listening for the horses.
~Verlyn Klinkenborg from A Light in the Barn

…let me live
in a small room
up the narrow stairs from the stalls,
the horse shifting comfortably below,
browsing and chewing sweet hay.
A single bed with blanket the color
of factory-sweepings will suffice,
each day shaped to the same arc,
because days can only end when
the lock slides free on the stall’s
Dutch door, and I lead the horse in,
then muscle the corroded bolt shut.
That’s what days are for: I cannot rest
until the horse comes home.
~Julie Bruck from “To Bring the Horse Home”

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The best moment in the barn is in the evening just following the hay feeding, as the animals are settling down to some serious chewing. I linger in the center aisle, listening to the rhythmic sounds coming from their stalls. It is a most soothing contented cadence, first their lips picking up the grass, then the chew chew chew chew and a pause and it starts again. It’s even better in the dark, with the lights off.

In the past, I’ve enjoyed listening to the eating sounds at night from the remote vantage point of my bedroom TV monitor system set up to watch my very pregnant mares before foaling. A peculiar lullaby of sorts, strange as that seems, but when all my farm animals are chewing and happy, I am at peace and sleep better.

It reminds me of those dark deep nights of feeding my own newborns, rocking back and forth with the rhythm of their sucking. It is a moment of being completely present and peaceful, and knowing at that moment, nothing else matters–nothing else at all.

If I am very fortunate, each day I live has a rhythm that is reassuring and steady, like the sounds of hay chewing, or rocking a baby. I awake thinking about where my next step will bring me, and then the next, like each chew of sweet hay.

I try to live in communion, without distraction by the worry of the unknown.

But the reality is:
life’s rhythms are often out of sync,
the cadence is jarring,
the sounds are discordant,
sometimes I’m the one being chewed on,
so pain replaces peacefulness.

Maybe that is why this lullaby in the barn~~this sanctuary~~is so treasured, the chosen place of Jesus’ birth. It brings me home to that doubting center of myself that needs reminding that struggle is fleeting, and peace, however elusive now, is forever. I always know where to find it for a few minutes at the end of every day, in a pastoral symphony of sorts.

Someday my hope for heaven will be angel choruses of glorious praise, augmenting a hay-chewing lullaby.

So simple yet so very, very good.

TEXT
O magnum mysterium,
et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
iacentem in praesepio!
Beata Virgo, cujus viscera
meruerunt portare
Dominum Iesum Christum.
Alleluia!

TRANSLATION
O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the newborn Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
the Lord, Jesus Christ.
Alleluia!

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Come and See: Sir, We Would See Jesus

September 20, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.”

Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.

And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.
John 12: 20-26

There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.

But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.
~Blaise Pascal from Pensees

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
~Augustine of Hippo from Confessions

The sacred moments,
the moments of miracle,
are often the everyday moments,
the moments which, if we do not look
with more than our eyes
or listen with more than our ears reveal only…
a gardener, a stranger coming down the road behind us,
a meal like any other meal.
But if we look with our hearts,
if we listen with all our being and imagination…
what we may see is Jesus himself.
~Frederick Buechner from The Magnificent Defeat

“Sir, we would like to see Jesus.”

I thought our old church pulpit was the only one to have a plaque with John 12:21 attached to it — a clear reminder to anyone standing there, preparing to speak. I learned this verse has traditionally graced pulpits through the generations, encouraging preachers and listeners to work together to clear the obscuring fog to find the Messiah.

Jesus is not hidden from us; indeed, we are heart-blind most of the time, so wrapped in our own worries and troubles that we do not know where to look or who to ask to help us see Him.

It is through the preaching and sharing of God’s Word that the heart veil is lifted. To those Gentiles who wanted to see the man they had heard about, Jesus tells them what must come next: He must die, like a seed in the ground, in order to be glorified. We see Him in ways and places we could never have imagined, especially hanging on the cross in our place.

As we restlessly seek to clear the fog and fill what is empty within us, we must keep our eyes open wide, listening with all our being, our hearts at the ready, every moment.

He is already here, right where we are, always beside us.

We would see Jesus, for the shadows lengthen
Across this wanting visage of our life;
We would see Jesus, our weak faith to strengthen
For the last weariness, the final strife.

We would see Jesus, the great rock foundation
Whereon our feet were set by sov’reign grace;
Nor life nor death, with all their agitation,
Can thence remove us, if we see His face.

We would see Jesus: this is all we’re needing;
Strength, joy, and willingness come with the sight;
We would see Jesus, dying, risen, pleading;
Then welcome day, and farewell mortal night.
~Anna Bartlett Warner “We Would See Jesus”

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To Rise Again

September 16, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

—Jesus explains

Not just the first crocus bulb poking
from the ground, but its pollen
shining saffronly on the legs of a bee.

The reverberations of a hammered
dulcimer or the puff of sweetness escaping
between peel and pith of a ripe tangelo.

It’s riding the elevator after the doctor
tells you, we can’t say why the scans
are suddenly clear, or, if you’re exhausted
from trying, time to surround yourself
with people you love. It’s waking

in the middle of the night, looking out
at the silhouettes of trees and realizing
there is nothing lonely about silence.
It’s cruising a wide-open Montana highway

or swinging your hips to the rhythm
of a street-corner bucket drummer
and daring the stares. It’s not the cicada
blooming from its shell as much

as the shell itself, balanced
on the finger of a little girl, then
tumbling along the grass tips
among the unkillable dandelions.
~Tania Runyan from “What It’s Like to Rise Again”

We’re each given a fresh start each day;
even when it was a fitful sleep,
and we’re fearful about what comes next,
or if there will even be a “next”…

Jesus explains what it is like to rise above the darkness;
bold, unafraid, leaving behind, neatly folded, the vestiges of death.

He gives us each reason to get up every morning,
surrounded by those who love us.

Even when crushed and broken,
He rose up so we can follow.

Everything’s going to be all right…

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Come and See: So the House was Filled…

September 6, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.

So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair.

The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said,“Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.

Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial.For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”

When the large crowd of the Jews learned that Jesus was there, they came, not only on account of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well,because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus.
John 12: 1-11

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”

I am a man who has hoped, in time,
that his life, when poured out at the end,
would say ‘good-good-good-good-good!’
like a gallon jug of the prime local spirit.

I am a man of losses, regrets, and griefs.
I am an old man full of love.
I am a man of faith.

But faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place.
Faith puts you out on a wide river in a little boat,
in the fog, in the dark.

Even a man of faith knows that …
we’ve all got to go through enough to kill us.
~Wendell Berry from Jayber Crow

She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.
Mark 14:8

Last week, it became apparent one warm late summer evening that in the thick bushes lining the front of our farmhouse under our windows, some animal had died.

The stink wafted on the breeze into our bedrooms through our summer-open windows.

The outdoor farm cats and our dog were accounted for, so it must have been a dead squirrel, a raccoon or even a (actually dead) possum, all occasional nighttime visitors to our cat food dish on the nearby front porch.

Trying to find the offending carcass would involve cutting through dense foliage that had been growing over two decades – not an easy task to undertake. So we closed the windows and hoped the smell would dissipate quickly.

Surprisingly, a day later it was mostly gone, much to our relief. It is possible another animal scavenger decided it was worth hauling away. We were most grateful the smell of death was no longer filling our house…

Just the week before this scripture section from the book of John, Martha warned Jesus that opening Lazarus’ tomb would release the inevitable stench of death. Yet when Lazarus was raised, the odor of death was overcome by renewal and restoration.

When Martha’s sister Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with an expensive fragrant oil, normally used in preparation for burial, it fills the entire house with its perfume. Jesus sees it as a harbinger for what is to come in the next week.

His faith in God’s plan means Jesus goes through enough to kill Him.

In this broken world, we live in the smudge and stench of mortal man’s smell of death, yet we are saved by this crushed, dying Savior who pours out a perfume of Himself for us.

Like Mary, let us also do what we can:
filling God’s house with His fragrance.

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Come and See: Gathering Together Those Who Scattered

August 30, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him,but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs.If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all.Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.”

He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation,and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

So from that day on they made plans to put him to death.

Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and there he stayed with the disciples.

Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves.

They were looking for Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple, “What do you think? That he will not come to the feast at all?”Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, he should let them know, so that they might arrest him.
John 11: 45-57

Thy children are gathering home,
With joy they are gathering home;
From all the divisions in which they were scattered,
Thy children are gathering home.
~Charles Naylor from “Thy Children are Gathering Home”

A setting out to find oneself astray,
And coming home at dusk a different way.
~Malcolm Guite from “Prayer/Walk”

God is at home, it’s we who have gone out for a walk.
~Meister Eckhart

we who wander,
scattered beyond reach

who take wrong turns
never ask for directions
stumble over the rough roads
find ourselves in the ditch
distracted by glitter and gold
forgetting our ultimate destination

nothing we’ve seen thus far
no goal achieved
compares to the unity awaiting us

gather us home, O Lord,
as you did through your death.

just point the way.

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The Winds and Sea Obey…

August 28, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A gale arose on the lake, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, ‘Lord, save us! We are perishing!’

And he said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, you of little faith?’ Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm.

They were amazed, saying, ‘What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?’
Matthew 8:23-27

Sweet Jesus, talking
   his melancholy madness,
     stood up in the boat
       and the sea lay down,

silky and sorry.
   So everybody was saved
      that night…

         Nobody knows what the soul is.

It comes and goes
   like the wind over the water —
      sometimes, for days,
        you don’t think of it.

Maybe, after the sermon,
   after the multitude was fed,
     one or two of them felt
       the soul slip forth

like a tremor of pure sunlight
   before exhaustion,
      that wants to swallow everything,
         gripped their bones and left them

miserable and sleepy,
    as they are now, forgetting
       how the wind tore at the sails
          before he rose and talked to it —

tender and luminous and demanding
   as he always was —
      a thousand times more frightening
         than the killer storm.
~Mary Oliver from “Maybe”

We sleep through our diminishing days
even more than we sleep through the nights,
unfocused on each passing moment
which never is to come again.

Those moments crash to shore,
then pull back to be lost forever.

There is a blindness in us all
about what is inevitably coming,
how we tumble through the years like waves,
overcome by their passage,
helpless to stop them.

Yet He is tender and luminous and demanding
He speaks to us with the same words
as He addresses the relentless stormy destructive sea.

Peace be still!

And so we obey in our helplessness,
forgiven, saved by grace,
so silky and sorry.

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One Hundred Ten Years Old

August 27, 2026August 27, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

The Old Church leans nearby a well worn road
upon a hill that has no grass or tree
The winds from off the prairie now unload
the dust they bring around it fitfully
The path that leads up to the open door
is worn and grayed by many toiling feet
of us who listen to the Bible lore
and once again the old time hymns repeat.
And every Sabbath Morning we are still
returning to the altar standing there;
a hush, a prayer, a pause, and voices
fill the Master’s House with a triumphant air.
The old church leans awry and looks quite odd,
But it is beautiful to us, and God.
~Della Vik “The Old Church”
(adapted in song by Stephen Paulus, linked below

…when I experienced the warm, unpretentious reception of those who have nothing to boast about, and experienced a loving embrace from people who didn’t ask any questions, I began to discover that a true spiritual homecoming means a return to the poor in spirit to whom the kingdom of heaven belongs.
~Henri Nouwen from The Return of the Prodigal Son

Today is the 110th anniversary of Wiser Lake Chapel‘s building dedication ceremony and picnic.

Back in the early days of Whatcom County, the little church on Wiser Lake had been constructed through “contributions of the people” in a rural neighborhood only a few miles from where we now live. $600 in lumber was provided by a local farmer whose trees were cut and milled and brought by horse drawn wagon to a building site adjacent to a one room school house along a corrugated plank road. The total property was “valued at $1800, but of even more value to the community.”

The dedication ceremony was held on Sunday, August 27, 1916 followed by “a basket dinner—come with well filled baskets for a common table, under the direction of the Ladies Aid”. This was to be followed by a “Fellowship Meeting, special music and fraternal addresses” and the day ended at 8 PM with a Young People’s Meeting.

So began the long history of the “Wiser Lake Church”.

For reasons unrecorded in the history of the church, the original denomination closed the doors thirty years later, and for a while the building was empty and in need of a congregation.

By the fifties, it became a mission church of the local Christian Reformed Churches and launched a Sunday School program for migrant farm and Native American children in the surrounding rural neighborhood. No formal church services started until the 60s. By the time the building was sixty years old, so many children were arriving for Sunday School, there was not enough room so the building was hoisted up on jacks to allow a hole to be dug underneath for a basement full of classrooms. Over the course of a summer, the floor space doubled, and the church settled back into place, allowed to rest again on its foundation.

Over seventy years after its dedication ceremony, our family drove past the boxy building countless times hurrying on our way to other places, barely giving it a second glance. It had a classic design, but showed its age with peeling paint, a few missing shingles, an old fashioned square flat roofed belfry, and arched windows. The hand lettered sign spelling out “Wiser Lake Chapel” by the road constituted a humble invitation of sorts, simply by listing the time of the service.

On a blustery December Sunday evening, we had no place else to be for a change. Instead of driving past, we stopped, welcomed by the yellow glow pouring from the windows and an almost full parking lot. Our young family climbed the steps to the big double doors, and inside were immediately greeted by a large balding man with a huge grin and encompassing handshake. He pointed us to one of the few open spots still available in the old wooden pews.

The sanctuary was a warm and open space with a high lofted ceiling, dark wood trim accents matching the ancient pews, and a plain wooden cross above the pulpit in front. There was a pungent smell from fir bough garlands strung along high wainscoting, and a circle of candles standing lit on a small altar table. Apple pie was baking in the kitchen oven, blending with the aroma of good coffee and hot cocoa.

The service was a Sunday School Christmas program, with thirty some children of all ages and skin colors standing up front in bathrobes and white sheet angel gowns, wearing gold foil halos, tinfoil crowns and dish towels wrapped with string around their heads. They were prompted by their teachers through carols and readings of the Christmas story. The final song was Silent Night, sung by candle light, with each child and member of the congregation holding a lit candle. There was a moment of excitement when one girl’s long hair briefly caught fire, but after that was extinguished by a quick-thinking mom in the pastor’s pulpit glass of water, the evening ended in darkness, with the soft glow of candlelight illuminating faces of the young and old, some in tears streaming over their smiles.

It felt like home. We had found our church.

We’ve never left, now well into our fourth decade here.

Over the past one hundred years this old building has seen a few thousand people come and go, has had peeling paint and missing shingles, a basement that floods when the rain comes down hard, toilets that don’t always flush very well, and though it smells heavenly every Sunday potluck after evening worship and teaching, there are times when it can be just a bit out of sorts and musty. It really isn’t anything to boast about.

It is humble and unpretentious yet envelops its people in its loving and imperfect embrace, with warmth, character and a uniqueness that is unforgettable.

It really is not so different from the folks who have gathered there over the years.

Like our pastors over the decades – Bruce Hemple, Stephen Tamminga, Albert Hitchcock and now Nathan Chambers – our chapel is humble and unpretentious, enveloping its people in a loving embrace of God’s Word, with warmth, character, grace and a uniqueness that is unforgettable.

We know we belong,
such as we are,
just as we are,
blessed by God in a wonderful old building to join together.

Perhaps you belong at this old church too…

Come and See: Unbind Him and Let Him Go

August 23, 2026 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it.

Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”

Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.”

Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone.

And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.”

When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.”

The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth.

Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
John 11:38-44

The man was wholly raised, but not wholly freed.
See, here is a living man in the garments of death!
That napkin and other grave-clothes were
altogether congruous with death,
but they were much out of place
when Lazarus began again to live.
It is a wretched sight to see a living man wearing his shroud.

If the Lord Jesus Christ employed the disciples
in relieving Lazarus of his grave-clothes,
do you not think he would employ us
if we were ready for such work?
Innumerable are the instances of souls
blessed by human instrumentality…
~Charles Spurgeon from “Unbinding Lazarus”

When the Lord speaks,
it will usually produce something that needs to be unwrapped.
God’s words are powerful. They create, heal, and restore.
They change things in both the visible and invisible realms.

…as we become committed to the discipline of unwrapping,
like the bystanders Jesus invited into Lazarus’ miracle story,
we’ll be better positioned to participate
in the wondrous things Jesus is always doing in the lives of others
and the world around us.
~Randy Boldt from “The Discipline of Unwrapping”

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white.
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.
~Gilbert Chesterton “The Convert”

Love, take my hand and lead me like the blind,
Unbandage me, unwrap me from my fear,
Open my eyes, my heart, my soul, my mind.
I struggle with these grave clothes, this dark earth,
But you are calling ‘Lazarus come forth!’
~Malcolm Guite from “He who has ears to hear let him hear’

The witnesses were marveling over the miracle of a living, breathing Lazarus, four days dead, stumbling out of the tomb, still wrapped in his graveclothes, in response to Jesus’ shout “Lazarus, come out.”

The next command, spoken to those standing there with their mouths agape, was just as consequential: “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Jesus’ message was clear. This miracle doesn’t end with a stilled heart beating again. It is an ongoing resurrected transformation for the witnesses as well.

What the Lord raises up, the community must unwrap, helping Lazarus move back into life, with support.

We are surrounded every day by those who, like Lazarus, are metaphorically walking in their graveclothes, spiritually dead or dying. They may be a family member or neighbor, they may be living unhoused in the woods down the road, they may be lying overdosed in a city alley. When called back to life, their next step can’t happen until they are unbound from the death-wraps that smother and blind them.

The rest is up to us, their community.
Jesus, with only His words, gives new life to the dead.
Jesus, with only His words, commands us to make it possible for the living to thrive, unshackled from paralyzing sin, and freed to new life.

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