ReLive

I've said it before, but I am not a morning person.

I exist in a semi-conscious state until 10 a.m. or so, and as such, spend a good portion of the morning sleepwalking through life. Multitasking is out of the question, and answering questions that require thought beyond multiple choice is a long, drawn out event. Essentially, I'm useless until late morning.

Now imagine living life that way. In a constant fog, we walk through- limp is a better word- bumping into people and things and never quite grasping what is going on. It's bad enough when this occurs in our physical life, but all too often, this is the constant state of our spiritual life.

Maybe it was a loss of faith, or a routine that became a rut, or assault after assault by negative events. Whatever caused it, your spirituality has fallen asleep- it has become dead. It gets really scary when this complacency becomes apathy- and you don't care if it gets better. That comes when you either really lose faith, or when you grow satisfied with where you are.

Both of those lead to spiritual death.

Jesus brought a dead man to life. Lazarus was physically dead- very dead. Four days dead. As the Munchkin Coroner said in the Wizard of Oz, "She's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead." Lazarus had a family who loved him, yet they had given up hope that he could be healed. Wouldn't you? Mary and Martha have become spiritually dead- they give all the right answers, but when reading their words, they seem...hollow. The story of Lazarus is as much about his resurrection as it is theirs.

Jesus enters the scene and speaks of being the Resurrection and the Life. Then He gives it. Lazarus comes out of the tomb, and Mary and Martha are given a spark to resuscitate their faith in Jesus. The moral of the story is that you are never too dead for Jesus to give you life- especially in the spiritual sense.

Jesus came to give us life, and give it to us abundantly. He wants us to not spend our lives half asleep, stumbling along on memorized prayers and speed-read Bible passages. He wants us to find our spark of life from Him, to live in Him, not just the knowledge of Him.

I know of people that know a lot about Jesus, but they are not alive in their faith. They have the right answers, they know the facts, they even pray regularly and read their Bibles. Yet they are not alive. For Jesus, life is not about knowing what to do and what to say, it is about knowing Him. If we do things just because they are expected of us, we are not living. But if our motivation is our love for and desire to know Christ, life fills our hearts and pours out of our actions and thoughts and words.

Lazarus' story is about the opportunity to ReLive. To be restored. To be resurrected.

Like Lazarus, I think we could all use a little jump start from time to time.