Y’all, I don’t even know how to explain this one or dress it up in fancy words. Last weekend we were hit by one of the terrible thunder storms that covered so much of Louisiana. It woke me up
at 3:00, and was so severe that I thought we might be in or about to be in a tornado. We had a nearly constant stream of hail, much of it larger than golf balls, severe winds, and water pouring down that was constant, so that you couldn’t hear any individual drops, just constant pouring. Lightning and thunder were strong and near. I immediately began considering if and where I should move my [literally could sleep through anything] children, and how to get them away from windows without waking them up, because the hail had become so severe I was afraid it would break our windows. I was and am amazed that they slept through it all. My phone in my hand, I tried to pull up a weather report to see if we were in a tornado. Loading…Loading…Loading…

I walked to the bathroom and crouched down, as years of living through tornados in Alabama had taught me almost nostalgically to do so. I thought, “I should pray.” I didn’t want to stop and pray until I knew the condition of the storm. I looked to the phone in my hand. Loading…Loading…Loading…

“I should pray,” I thought again.
I looked back at the phone. Still loading. I realized it didn’t matter what I knew about the weather, we just needed to survive this storm.

“God,” I said, “I’ve believed in You for ten years. Time to see that all those years of believing weren’t in vain.” I flung my phone into the corner. I knelt down, resting my head against the lid of the toilet while I concentrated. I always believed the verse James 1:6 – “But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.” So when I pray, I try my best to believe that what I ask will happen. This usually takes a few minutes for me, though. Every time I focused my mind on Jesus I seemed to fall into His arms in instant peace, but every time my inner gaze turned back to the storm, I felt ripped away from that embrace. I tried hard to hold onto Him, willing myself to remember all the love we had shared over the years, all the many things He had done for me and all the recorded miracles of His ministry.

Finally I felt I had focused enough. “Jesus, I love You,” I whispered. “Father,” I said aloud, “in the name of Jesus Christ my Lord, stop this hail.”

And it just stopped. There was no lessening, no slowing down, and no additional prayer was needed. It was just gone.

I waited and listened for the sound of it, assuming in my jaded heart that it was going to start back up in a minute and I was going to tell myself comforting excuses for why my prayers weren’t answered. But it was gone. Every so often, a stray piece of hail that had been stuck in the trees fell. But that was it. It was all gone.

After a few minutes, when I realized the prayer really had been answered, I shifted my focus to the wind. You would think that I would be filled with faith this point, but it was just the opposite: I was doubting what had just happened, and I was assuming that there was no way such a thing could happen twice.

But I focused, and this time said a longer prayer, to try and bolster my own faith. “Lord God,” I said, “I know your son Jesus calmed storms, and I know that Christ lives in me.” (Again, saying this to remind myself, not to impress God). “Father, I ask that through the Christ who lives in me, these winds will stop.”

Right then and there, the wind calmed around our house from howling down to a breeze.

It was beginning to dawn on me that maybe my prayers really had been answered and it was not just the fluke that my head kept telling me it must be.

I prayed once more, briefly, for the rain, not asking it to stop (because the ecosystem here seems to hinge on occasional flooding), but to lessen, and it did.

I went back to bed. My children never stirred.

——–
——–

My mother had been visiting at the time, on the same property but in a different house. I told her the next day, sort of half assuming that no one would believe me, since I was the one saying it and I still scarcely believed what I saw. But she said she did believe me. She said she had gone out at that hour, watching the frantic hail from the carport, and then, all at once, it just stopped.

Y’all have a good day, and stay warm and dry!
In Love,
Morgan Grace Hart

Scripture references:
Luke 8:22-25, Romans 8:11, Galatians 2:20, Colossians 1:27

I make a point in this blog to use the name “Jesus” as much as possible. Even in the title, I use the entire name of Jesus Christ (if you leave “Christ” off you get a page that redirects you here).

The reason I do this is that, if you watch, people will often shy away from the word “Jesus”. “God” is acceptable: it has a vagueness that makes it palatable for people with a wide variety of beliefs. But “Jesus” is challenging. It’s very specific. It challenges us to believe in a certain religion, to accept the idea of God existing in a man with a name that, in His day, was as common as “Joe” or “Mike”. The Hebrew name of Jesus was “Y’shua” (we get “Jesus” from the Greek version of the name, because the New Testament was written in Greek) and is still in common use today in its English version, Joshua.

You see, I believe that to say “Jesus” is to push back against the world. It’s to establish His name as more than just a cuss word, more than a concept, more than a joke. It’s to state that God can be known by human beings on a first name basis. When we let His name be relegated to comedies and vulgar language, we teach people to laugh and ignore it when they hear the name “Jesus”. And if they teach themselves to ignore it, how will they ever learn this Truth:

“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

Thank you, and have a good day. Amen!

Even in a world that is often Biblically illiterate, the name LAZARUS is something of a social meme. We all know the story: guy with interesting name who comes back from the dead.

 

 

While many people know this story, there is a depth to it that many people miss. Jesus, close friends with Lazarus, actually had the chance to keep Lazarus from dying, but did not go for it.  Why? The answer is a testament to Christ’s absolute commitment to the will of God, and His desire to provide help to all people, not just His personal favorites.

 

To set the stage, understand that Lazarus and his family were some of Jesus’ closest friends. With the stressful, often sleepless, schedule of His ministry, Jesus had a rare chance to relax in the home of Lazarus. We see Him there nearly every time He visited that region of the country, reclining at their table, sharing their food, and finding a chance to catch His breath for a moment in the home of His good friends (Luke 10:38-41, John 11:2, 11:5, 12:2-3).

 

That being said, Christ’s life was that of a deity. It wasn’t just about what He found comforting and familiar as a human being; it was also about His God nature, His thirst to do the will of the Father. Multiple times in the Bible, we see Christ have to make a decision between human comforts and the will of God (Luke 4, Matthew 12:45-47, Mark 14:35-36). Put another way, the Cross that Jesus bore in life was not limited to the place where He was crucified. A cross was a meaningful daily struggle, a decision to choose between personal will and the will of God (Luke 9:23).

 

This was put to yet another test in the area around the Jordan River. Following the will of the Spirit that had guided Him thus far,  Jesus received His daily mission. This time, it was to preach to the people of that area.

 

While preaching to the crowds, Jesus received disturbing news. His friend Lazarus, whom He loved dearly, lay suffering and dying. ‘Fortunately,’ the messenger must have reminded Jesus, ‘he lives only 2 miles from here, so you can easily go to his house and heal him.’

 

Jesus had a choice to make. Should He stay where He was, preaching to the group of people God had sent Him to? Or should He delay the ministry for a day, attend to His personal friendships, soothe His friend, and then return?

 

So what did Jesus do? He remained where He was, doing the work the Father had given Him to do, and did not stop until He was finished teaching the people.

 

While Jesus was still working, Lazarus died.

 

Even with His personal, human love for Lazarus, Jesus’ desire to reach out to everyone who needed Him, and to finish the work God had given Him to do, was stronger. Jesus was so absolutely committed to the guidance of the Spirit that abandoning God’s task for Him for just one day, even when it was a matter of life and death, was unacceptable.

 

Now some may hear this and think it means somehow that God will abandon people who are suffering. That is not the case. This was an incident borne of Jesus’ time spent living in the flesh, when He was unable by the laws of being human to be two places at the same time. Only after His death could He really be everywhere at once (John 14:25-26). This was also a heartbreaking decision for Jesus to make. The shortest verse in the entire Bible, “Jesus wept,” (John 11:35) came from the moment when Jesus arrived at His late friend’s home. He was extremely sensitive to the grief of Lazarus’ family, and comforted them. And if there is any further doubt of His commitment to His friend, John reminds us of how dangerous it was for Jesus to travel to Bethany, Lazarus’ hometown, and implies that the miracle Jesus performed there was what sealed His fate with the religious leaders (John 11:8, 16, 45-57).

 

In the end, of course, Jesus set everything right. He raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11:43). Lazarus’ family immediately forgot their grief and soon threw a feast. And Lazarus’ death was not in vain, because his raising was what brought a large number of people to faith in Christ.

 

But it was a few weeks later that Jesus really set everything right again. Shouldering a heavy cross, He bore the sins of Lazarus, the sins of Lazarus’ family, and the sins of you and I, as He readied Himself to die.

 

God bless y’all, and have a great weekend.

 

P.S. – these images are just the result of a Google search for “Lazarus”. I’m not endorsing any products depicted.