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The longing persists even now. God, you will make everything right. If I had You engaged in the thing, it would have been a good outcome, not this loss. Not this terrible loss. Not this. Not this death.

Oh how we fight death. The feeling of death. The empty space. The connection gone.

What comes when we dare feel it's coming? What comes in when we stop the affair with our idea of ourselves? Our mission? When we stop focusing on a beloved? When we stop fixing what we thought was broken? What comes in when the making of money and position shows the mirror to be glass and paint? What, what, what?

If only God. If only You would fix this. If only You would be alive for all time in my experience of You. If only I could trust.

Mary, do you believe? Do you believe in the resurrection? Yes, I believe that there will be a resurrection Lord. Mary, I am the Resurrection and the Life.

You Are? Yes, I Am.

Then, I believe You. Something in me believes You. You hold promise, hope, love, and life in Yourself. I believe as much as I can believe.

"Roll away the stone." But Lord, he stinks after being in there dead for four days. (You are so confusing).

"Roll away the stone." (Mary, I Am the Resurrection and the Life).

To show that Truth overcomes death, Lazarus come out. "Lazarus, Come Out."

"Take off his grave clothes."

(Oh Lord, You are so much more than my mind can conceive. Thank You. I love you).

Is this a hoax? In the mind of a cynic or one in chronic denial of personal death, Jesus' calling Lazarus to life could have appeared as if a hoax had been perpetrated. But for the one close, whose ears have heard, whose eyes have seen, and whose hands have handled; it's life. His life. Shared with us.

Emptiness washes in and out, death comes, connections fail, but that which our eyes have seen, our ears have heard and our hands have handled; that experience lives. The Word become flesh. The Resurrection and the Life alive among us and in us. Christ invited in, the hope of glory. The truth is not delivered in secret. What comes in when we dare allow it, is a choice between life or death. Accept or reject; ours to let in or keep out. Ours to decide: Dead or alive?

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