Commas (,) and Periods (.) and Easter Sunday

Yesterday in Church our pastor preached on the resurrection.  That seems obvious, as it was Easter Sunday, except for the fact that the main scripture for the sermon was the resurrection of Lazarus, not that of Jesus. He focused most of his sermon on John 11, where Lazarus gets sick, yet Jesus does not go to him until after he has died, and Jesus resurrects him four days after Lazarus has died.

Our pastor made a few points that I want to touch on before getting to my main point. At one point he highlighted when Jesus says "Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe."  On this verse our pastor brought up the fact that Jesus had done healings before, and that if Jesus went and healed Lazarus to prevent his death, there would always be a few people who would say "he wasn't really that sick" or "it was the doctor who saved him."  However, once Lazarus was dead, nobody could deny that it was an outright miracle performed by Jesus that brought Lazarus back from the dead.  He also said something else that I found interesting.  Our pastor added that maybe there are times when the situation doesn't call for a miracle. Perhaps Lazarus' being sick didn't call for a miracle, but his having died did.  He made the point that we want and expect God to do miracles in our lives, but we don't want to be in the situation that requires a miracle. Interesting point.

Our pastor also highlighted Martha's faith in the story.  In John 21:11, Martha says "Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask." What incredible faith! Not only did she have faith that Jesus could have healed Lazarus had he come before Lazarus died, but she fully trusted that even after Lazarus' death, Jesus could ask God to resurrect him, and it would be done.  If only we could all live with that kind of faith.

I think what impacted me the most however was not something from scripture, but rather a point about the overall story that out pastor made.  In relation to this story, our pastor referenced a friend of his who once said "don't put commas where God puts periods, and don't put periods where God puts commas."  I particularly liked that last part, as it is incredibly applicable to this story and to our lives as Christians. In John 11 it would have been so easy to put a period after Lazarus' death. Lazarus dies, end of story.  As humans we'd tend to do that, but God put a comma there instead.  While we might expect the story to end there, God wasn't done, and he showed his incredible power again in resurrecting Lazarus from the dead.

I think this point is particularly applicable in our everyday life. We can't see what God has in store for us, and we don't know what God is doing, whether it be in the future or even how He is working in things that we are currently experiencing.  It's so easy for us to experience something and put a period after it. End of story.  I think that quite often we think something is over, and God is still working.  Too often God does something in our lives and we say "that was God working, thank you," and assume that the work is done and it's time to move to the next thing. However, God may still be working in that situation.  Even when we can't see it, God is always working.  When we think God is done, He may be just getting started.

So when something isn't going well, or doesn't appear to have worked out the way we'd like, let's remember that God works in mysterious ways, and we often don't understand or even realize how God has been working until long after He's done His work.  I think if we can all remember that God is always working and that we need to actively look for how He is doing that, we might just see things we didn't expect to see.

Let's leave the punctuation to God.