Graves into Glory

     I feel as though I have just been walking on holy ground.  Mind you, it might not have appeared that way at a mere glance, for it was just at my dear friend's house for a small group Bible study I'm privileged to attend.  We're just a few middle-aged women dressed in warmups and jeans, rushing in, scurrying out, trying to silence ringing cell phones, searching for reading glasses in our over-stuffed purses (well, at least mine, anyway!).  But trust me, it was holy ground. Anytime you see the glory of God displayed in frail fellow dust people, well, it pretty well staggers and stuns you... and the only response is gratitude for the grace of God.
     You see, a number of these dear, godly women are traveling along hard, rocky paths right now.  Prodigal children or suffering loved ones.  I'm sure the sorrows differ from yours, but the pain does not--that pain that seems to reside deep down in the marrow of your life.  Don't we all struggle?  Don't we all face the reality that somehow this is not quite the way our lives--or the lives of those we love--should be going?   That this disappointment, or betrayal, or illness, or limitation, or  failure could not possibly be for the best... and for God's best.  Somehow, someway, we or our loved one has missed out on that best, that beautiful, perfect plan God should have had in store for His beloved children.
     But I saw the reality that nothing more powerfully and perfectly displays the glory of God than the beauty of belief in the face of bitter disappointment or bruising sorrow.   It reminds me of a phrase I heard long ago that described some heartbreak as a "bruising of a blessing."  The pain of sorrow that dogged belief transforms into standing strong and firm upon the promises and presence of Almighty God.  Standing firm based upon faith in His Word rather than faltering upon our feelings.  It's not fun, but, boy, there is just no stronger, deeper testimony to a watching world.
     The Bible is full of one such testimony after another--testimonies of man's pain and God's power, man's sorrow and God's sovereign faithfulness, man's disappointments and God's divine transformations.  Like a sparkling diamond set off against the backdrop of blackest cloth, it seems He uses our struggles to most clearly and compellingly reveal His glory and grace and greatness.  Remember the disciples passing the man born blind from birth and asking Jesus, "'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?'"  Jesus answered, 'It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.'" (John 9:2-3)  And when Jesus healed the man, God was glorified, and the man believed in Christ, gave powerful testimony, and worshipped.
     Or how about the time the disciples were unable to heal the little boy who suffered from crippling seizures?  The desperate father brings his young son to Jesus with a plaintive cry: "But if you can do anything have compassion on us and help us." (Mark 9:22)  Jesus immediately responds, "If you can!  All things are possible for one who believes."  And in what is surely one of the most moving verses in the Bible, the distraught father cries out, "I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mk 9:24)  Can't you relate?  That is me!  I am that father--believing, trying, but so often failing and falling short.
     Yet how our Savior loves such words for it is when we are out of options, out of strength, out of self-devised schemes, out of all save our faith, faltering though it may be, that the Lord Jesus loves to move and heal and transform and enable and empower.  He makes all things--ALL things, even that ugly disappointment or sorrow--beautiful in His time.  And so the work of God is mightily displayed in this young boy when Jesus heals him and restores him to his family.
     Just one more example--and surely one of my favorites in all of scripture--when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.  Do you recall how Lazarus' desperate sisters send for Jesus, telling Him: "Lord, he whom You love is ill." (John 11:3)  Lord, we cry out, my child whom You love is sick and lost and alone.  Lord, he or she whom You love is....  you fill in the blank: unemployed, severely depressed, barren, bereft, confused, discouraged.  Surely, the sisters thought, Jesus would come quickly.
     But He did not.  He waits four long days before going to Bethany.  What on earth?  The one whom He loved was dying. He could have stopped his suffering and prevented his death, but He doesn't.   Instead, Jesus tells the disciples: "Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe." (John 11:14)  When Jesus arrives at the weeping, mourning gravesite, He tells the grieving sisters--and us--"I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.  Do you believe this?"(John 11:25-26)
       Jesus tells them to remove the stone from the grave of a man dead and decaying for four days. Martha responds exactly as we would--No way, it will smell horrible.  In essence she's bitterly saying, "It's too late.  Jesus, You blew it.  You could have done something.  You could have prevented this tragedy, but You didn't and now all hope is gone. Forget it."   But, once again, we see those words that reveal how God always uses and transforms our pain and sorrow into something beautiful and powerful.  "Jesus said to her, 'Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?'" (John 11:40)   There it is again--belief that leads to glory, belief that results in seeing God work and move in impossible situations.
     The stone is rolled away, and the Word, who was with God in the beginning and through Whom all things are made, speaks a word to a dead and decaying body and commands him "Lazarus, come out."
     And a dead man walks out of a grave, alive by the power of God--the glorious, resurrection power of Almighty God.  The same power that is available to you and to me as we face whatever sorrows and strains and struggles God has allowed into our lives.  The same power that restores sight to the blind, heals the sick, and raises the dead--that is the power at work in our lives, transforming, redeeming, restoring, and ultimately glorifying the Savior who died and rose again for us.
     O Lord, we believe!  Help our unbelief!  And He will.  And He does.  Every.  Single.  Time--if we call out to Him by faith, He will always always always prove faithful and powerful and glorious beyond all we can imagine or even hope (Ephesians 3:20!)  He is the God of hope.  He is the God of healing.  He is the God of resurrection.  He is the God who transforms our graves into glory.   To our Healer, our Hope, our Heavenly Helper, our Resurrected Lord, be all the glory.