Four days late or right on time?

Unless you've been living in a cave without a connection to the outside world this week, you probably heard about a little girl named Nadia Bloom who went missing after going for a bike ride. It was the fourth full day after she had disappeared before a man prayed, and went into the swamp looking for her, and ultimately found her; a task that trained law enforcement and search and rescue had not been able to accompish. Being slightly on the inside (her family is a family friend), a mother, and a minister's wife myself, I had a small idea of what the various players were going through as the family's church staff sat with them, praying and waiting for a miracle. Growing up in the same area, I also had a pretty good idea of the odds and statistical likelihood of her safe return. Needless to say, it was a pretty dark few days.

I haven't been able to shake something though, since several hours before word began to leak that she had been located and was okay. The story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead kept drifting in and out of my prayers and my consciousness.

The story basically goes like this:

Jesus had a good friend, a man by the name of Lazarus who got sick. Jesus was good friends with Lazarus, and his sisters Mary and Martha. Sure that Jesus could fix the problem, they sent a message for him to get his tail back to their village in Bethany and take care of business.

When he heard the news, he said, "This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's son will be glorified through it." Jesus loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus. Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.

Then he said to the disciples, "let's head on over there now." He also told them that Lazarus was already dead, and for their sake, "I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But, let's go to him."

Hold the phone here. Jesus, the all-powerful one, would-be savior of the world (this was before the cross happened), knew his friend was sick, and he could heal him. After all, he'd healed lots of ungrateful sick people before, some he had relationships with, some he did not. This was his friend for crying out loud! But he didn't drop everything. He waited two days, until after he knew Lazarus was already dead.

By the time Jesus got there, Lazarus had already been dead and buried in a cave for four days. Now, I'm not a doctor or forensics expert, but that is pretty far gone. Martha met him on the road, saying, "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."

Mary comes out and repeats her sister's words, essentially berating him, if you'd come when we asked you to, we wouldn't be in this pickle.

Jesus asks to go to the tomb. He tells them to move the stone ("but it'll stank to high heaven! He's been there 4 days now!").

"Then Jesus said, 'Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?'

...'Father I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me...'"

Jesus called him out of the tomb. Lazarus came out, alive and well.

Nadia Bloom didn't die in her 4 days in the woods. What she saw and what she did will come out soon (I have no doubt of that!), but there are several other questions that have been asked:

1) If there is a God (which there is), why would he have let this child disappear in the first place, and not be found before she was?

2) Why hasn't God heard (or rather, answered the way we would like), the prayers of others?

3) Is God really involved in this little girl's story, or was it luck, perchance, or just common sense?

The answer to the first question is that free will is a gift the Father has given his children. We can choose to obey the guidelines and commands in His Word, or we can choose not to. The second part of this questions is that God doesn't act on our timetables, our 24-hour news cycles, or any other deadline that we put on Him. He is the creator and holder of all time, we are just blessed to get to live within it. We don't know why Jesus waited until Lazarus had been buried four days before cruising into town, but he was glorified in this. By Tuesday morning, the experts weren't giving a whole lot of hope of a positive outcome for Nadia. But God was right on time in sending someone to the same spot He knew she was all along, right in the palm of his hand.

The second question is harder. There have been so many times when we pray that we don't get the answers that we want to hear. We then assume that God either doesn't exist, or is a spiteful beast who couldn't care less about us. There is nothing farther from the truth! The same free will that allowed Nadia the choice to go into the woods, is also afforded to each and every one of us. And free will is the initial choice between sin and obedience. There is a lot of sin and evil in the world. Sin is the consequence of disobedience. Even when bad things happen, it is often the consequence of a conscious choice lurking somewhere in the past. It isn't fair to apply this completely to cancer or similar circumstances, although since we don't know what causes them in the first place, there's nothing that says that it's not the result of some long-ago decision (generationally, or individually). When we pray simply for a single outcome, we run the risk of being disappointed. We can't see the giant plan that God has; sometimes the no's really are for our benefit.

The third question, "was God really involved in this story?" can only be answered as "YES!" Again, we don't know why God didn't intervene sooner; that's a question for heaven. But in my opinion, four days late was right on time.

What About the Blue Zebras?

I took Isaac to the post office today. He was very excited when we got back to the car and he found a toy zebra in the car. He was telling me about the black stripes, and I absentmindedly asked him what color the zebra was. He told me white, and then asked the following questions, that have had me turning on my head ever since:

What about the blue zebras? Where do they live?

I started to explain to him about camouflage and other such "evolutionary" concepts, and then I realized, if God could make a zebra to be protected from being lion dinner, hidden by its stripes, then God could make a blue zebra.

But maybe God does make blue zebras.

Maybe the person we avoid with the unpleasant look on their face, or way of relating to people is a blue zebra. Or maybe the person who stands radically for what they believe is the blue zebra. Maybe we don't recognize the blue zebras because we're too busy hunting them down, slaughtering them for a meal, and then moving onto our next victim. Maybe the uniqueness of the blue zebra isn't so unique, nor our response as corporate lions.

Maybe we need to watch for blue zebras more often.