BEING A MIRACULOUS SIGN

Today's blog is dedicated to the memory of my friend, Christy Lewis, who walked around on this earth being a miraculous sign until Jesus took her Home on July 13.

"This is a wicked generation. It asks for a miraculous sign..." Luke 11.29

Though style may be optional, that we become rescuers is not. If we have been rescued from the grave, gratitude should prompt the kind of desire to obey our Savior and Master that compels us to throw out the only Lifeline there is, remembering all the time that it is He who is the Lifeline and we are only the thrower-outers of it.

Jesus performed many miracles in His short ministry, but His main purpose was to point the people to the Answer to all their needs, not just the one that was clamoring at the moment. Remember how indignant the people became when instead of healing a man's legs first, Jesus chose to proclaim that his sins were forgiven? He asked the question, "Which is harder, to heal a man's legs or to forgive sin?" In the end, He did both. His point was that we are shallow and foolish seekers who ask for a limb to be bound up while ignoring a dying root. After healing someone, Jesus didn't ask all of them to go out and heal other legs or eyes or stomachs. Jesus, rather, wanted the recipients of His miracles not necessarily to go out and do miracles but to go out and be miracles. That way, when others saw a life victorious over lust, greed, worry, envy, pride, and the like, they, too, would want to be healed in those ways. They would want to know and follow this Great Physician. Following the Great Physician is the crux of all matters and the desired product of all miracles.

Once Jesus was summoned by two sisters to come quickly and heal their brother Lazarus, one of His dearly loved friends. His response to this was ,"This sickness will not end in death. " Most of us know the end of the story: Jesus lingered where he was four more days before making it to Bethany and finding a dead Lazarus who was already stinking. On this occasion, Jesus decided to use the circumstances to glorify the Father by bringing credence to His Son: He raised Lazarus from his dead physical state and restored his former physical life. Therefore, many of the onlookers put their faith in Him.

But even if Jesus had not raised Lazarus from his dead state to a living state, what Jesus said would still have been true: Lazarus' sickness would not have ended in death. (It is interesting, and maybe even helpful, to note here that when Jesus spoke of a believer's death, He customarily called it "falling asleep," not "dying." "Dying " was a term reserved for what we call "the second death.") Lazarus had "fallen asleep" and was enjoying eternal life! Every time I read this story, I feel sorry for Lazarus, whose body might have been stinking, but whose soul certainly was not. In fact, those four days were his best days ever! I have even wondered if the fact that Jesus was about to interrupt this lovely new Life might have been at least part of His reason for weeping! It is also interesting to note that this occasion is a close parallel to the one I mentioned a few paragraphs earlier with the lame man: Here, too, before Jesus performs the lesser, but more visible, miracle of healing/restoring the flesh, He makes sure to instruct the listeners about the deeper, more lasting-- but less flashy-- miracle of restoring the soul. In the lame man's case, He spoke of forgiving sins; in the case of Lazarus, He confronted Martha with these words: "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die." We know He is not promising Martha that no one who believes in Him will ever literally die, but rather is referring to the death of our souls. Only after He has made this clear, as before with the lame man, does He deliver the miracle that everyone wanted to see at that particular moment.

There is an ongoing controversy in these latter days about whether or not not people are still endowed with the ability to perform the kinds of miracles Jesus and some of His followers performed. However, there is nothing debatable about whether or not His followers should be miracles. We are instructed to be a "peculiar people," "sanctified," "a people that are my very own," " a holy priesthood," and "a royal priesthood," just to list a few descriptors of the picture of a Christian. We have been redeemed by the blood of the perfect Lamb of God. We have been raised to walk in newness of life. In short, we should look different, even odd. The world should look at us and scratch their heads.

When people watch us live, do they notice that we are not acting, reacting, and responding the way we "should" be-- meaning, the way the World usually does? Are we a living testimony to the power of the resurrection of Jesus?

Ours, too, without a recognition of our Savior, is a "wicked generation"-- a skeptical generation, a generation of creatures who begin losing hope at an early age and harden as they grow older, trying everything under the sun to quench their desires and to give their lives some kind of meaning. Most of them, having failed to find it, pass on the next generation their skepticism and hopelessness. We are God's primary sign to this wicked generation.

God wants to make something supernatural of us. Is your life a miracle?

[I lost a friend last week. Her flesh fought a hard and admirable battle, but finally she fell asleep. Many of us prayed hard that she would once again, as she did a few years ago, beat the cancer, rise up from her sick bed, and go back to teaching school and playing with her darling new granddaughter. Some believed almost to the very end that the scripture, "This sickness will not end in death" would apply to Christy. I hope that today's words will help them all to believe that indeed it did. Christy was a Christian. In all the ways that matter the most, her sickness did not end in death but in victorious eternal life!]