The story of Lazarus from the New Testament is my favorite.
I love how wonderfully imperfect Martha is because I think we’re all wonderfully imperfect and therefore Martha is someone I can relate to. I love how even though she tells Jesus again and again that she believes in him, that when he asks for the stone to be rolled away from Lazarus’s tomb, she hesitates, confused at what he’s about to do and perhaps questioning as to whether or not he’s even capable of doing it.
She doubts. We all doubt even though we believe. We doubt because we’re human. If we didn’t doubt, there would be no need for faith.
I love that as Jesus is about to show his divinity in the raising of Lazarus, he also shows us his most human side. He weeps for Lazarus. He cries for Mary and Martha and their loss. He grieves for what he has lost even though he knows what he is about to do.
It is a beautifully complete story, except for one thing.
It is something missing in most every one of the miracles that Jesus performs.
We’re missing the epilogue.
Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Jesus restores the sight of the blind man. Jesus turns water into wine. Jesus casts the demons out.
But what happens the next day? What happens after?
In the case of the blind man, what do you do with yourself the day after? You’ve been blind all your life. You’ve been a beggar. You’ve probably been alone with no family. We see a little of what happens to the blind man in John 9 after the miracle. People question if he was really blind at all. His own parents really want nothing to do with him.
What happens to him? Does he get a job? Does he leave his life and family behind and follow Jesus?
And for the men who had demons cast out of them, what happens to them? Will people believe that they are whole again? Will their families still be frightened of them? How can they return to any kind of normal life? What are their options?
And Lazarus? What do you do with your life when you’ve already been dead? What kind of life did Lazarus lead after? How was he changed?
I think these are important questions to ask. All of Jesus’s miracles were miracles of transformation and though they all produced different results, they all had one thing in common … they were designed to bring people closer to God, so that they might know Him better through His son.
In that way, miracles of transformation still happen today. We may not be able to see someone rise from the dead, or someone have their sight restored with a bit of mud in their eye, but people are transformed by Jesus Christ every day.
They are called “mountaintop moments,” times when we feel so close to God that all we want to do is cover our face in His presence and swear to do His work all the days of our life.
But as I’ve been told repeatedly, we don’t live on the mountaintops.
So what happens to us the next day?
Much like the people who experienced or witnessed miracles in the Gospels, what do we do now that we know, now that we know how it is that we are saved?
I find myself thinking back to the Samaritan woman at the well. She did not experience a miracle as we have come to know them, but she was transformed by her meeting with Jesus. What did she do with that new knowledge?
She ran back to her village and told everyone she knew about what she had experienced.
I don’t know what Lazarus did the next day. I don’t know what the blind man did or the men who had demons driven from them. But I hope they did what the Samaritan woman did, what we all need to do, and that is share their miraculous journey with everyone and give credit to God.
