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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness Gal 5:22 |
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Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Saturday, April 20, 2024
Today's Passage : Today's Passage :The Death of Lazarus Bible Verse:John 11:1-16 (ESV) "Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” After saying these things, he said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.”" Message:
Mary and Martha are the most familiar set of sisters in the Bible. (Some earlier interpreters blended the person of Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene and the sinful woman of Luke 7:36-50; but most scholars today believe she was a different person.) Both Luke and John describe them as friends of Jesus. Luke’s story, though only four verses long, has been a complex source of inspiration, interpretation, and debate for centuries. John’s story, which says the sisters had a brother named Lazarus, spans seventy verses.
When John 11 starts, Jesus is in the wilderness where John had been baptizing, avoiding the Jewish authorities who are, by this point, determined to arrest him and bring him to trial (or simply to stone him on the spot). Martha and Mary, whom he loves, send word to him that their brother Lazarus is ill, and so Christ decides to return to the danger zone: Bethany is a village just outside the walls of Jerusalem. His disciples are afraid for him to return there.
To answer them, Jesus continues to use the metaphor of day/light and night/darkness. Because he walks in the light of God — the “daytime” — he will not stumble. That is, he can see clearly what he is to do, just as a man can see clearly in daylight, and he will not stumble like a man walking in the dark of night. He will not make a mistake.
In his epistles, Paul often uses the word “sleep” to describe what we call “death,” e.g. 1 Corinthians 15:18. Paul means to emphasize that what we perceive as death, the destruction of our physical bodies, is only a period of rest, because we will be resurrected for eternity.
But these verses are the only time Jesus blurs the line between sleep and death. There doesn’t seem to be a consistent usage of the two terms “die” and “sleep” in the New Testament, and it is hard to tell why Jesus says, “This illness does not lead to death.”
We might take it more literally, to mean that Lazarus will only fall into a coma. Or we might take it as a broad metaphor, i.e., Christ telling us that illness of the body does not lead to true death, and what we perceive as death will become no more final than sleep; and that he will raise Lazarus from death as if waking him up from a sleep, as a foretaste of his own glorification, his victory over death.
Meditation : Prayer : God of mercy, swift to help: as my lips pour forth your praise, fill my heart with the peace you give to those who wait for your salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord......Amen |
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