The Tomb of Lazarus

Unlikely resurrections...

As I was driving back to Saint Louis from Chicago, I found myself listening to "Never Lost" (Elevation Worship) on repeat. I'd actually been listening to it for a while now, but over the last few weeks, it hit differently.

"You are still showing up at the tomb of every Lazarus... "

A few hours before my father passed, I was with him. (Feel free to read my post "Mad at Dad" for the revelation from that moment, from that day.) Today, I want to reflect on one particular part of that experience. My father in his last few hours of life.

My father's condition was worsening and he had a DNR. This meant no matter what possible options the doctors may have had to prolong my father's life, his wish was basically to not permit those efforts.

Being a Believer, I thought to myself, "Okay. I can't do anything .... But God can."

I smiled inside, clinging to a thread of hope that what I couldn't do, God would.

I mean, why not?

Now, quick recap on my father's stance of faith: My father was a self-proclaimed Atheist for a long time. Eventually, he started to claim believing in a "higher power." One of our last conversations was him stating "I never said 'I don't believe in God.' It's that 'White Jesus; [crap] that bothers me." With all of this in my head in that moment at the hospital, I thought, "God, this is Your moment. You bring him back to full health like You did last week. (Yup. He was in the hospital the week prior with renal failure issues.) But God - You show him Your power. You let these doctors see that what they can't do, You can perform."

Eventually, I had to leave the hospital to take my daughter home and I was playing "Wait on You" (another Elevation Worship song). There is a part in the first verse where Dante sings "cause I've been in the hospital room, when they said 'Sorry. There's nothing more we can do.' But it wasn't through." I wanted so desperately to believe "it wasn't through" for my dad.

I wanted to come home. Get my daughter in bed, and get a call about a miracle. I reflected on Martha's pain. "Jesus. The one you love has sick." (John 11:3)

Instead I got a call that there was really nothing more they could do. My father's organs were failing. His BUN range (which is typically a 1-10 number) was 266. He wasn't going to make it through the night. But I still believed in a miracle.

A few hours later, I received a call....

He had passed.

And as I got back to the hospital and sat in the room with my father postmortem, I then felt the anger of Martha. "Lord, if you would have been here...." (John 11:21)

Now, I know... (You know I know.) God was there. I didn't feel abandon more than I felt disappointed. My father and I had been estranged for years. He left my mother and me when I turned 17. To be honest, living in the same home as him was not a picnic either. But over the past five months, before his passing, we'd grown closer. We had closure. I felt forgiveness towards the man, that just last year, I thought I'd never speak to again.

I was building memories with a man I'd never seen sober. My daughter met and loved her Grandpop.

And now he was lifeless, in front of me. With one eye still not completely shut. (My daughter always sleeps like that and I never understood where it came from until that morning).

But he was gone and I was face to face with a future I no longer had.

I felt the Spirit of God and John 11:35 came alive in the room next to me.

"Jesus wept." He felt my pain. I felt surrounded by sadness. The same way he felt the sorrows of Martha and Mary. While my father may have been a proud member of the "Not sure if God is my Guy" club. He was still God's child. "The one He loved."

But where Mary and Martha and I had many similarities, they ended there.

God wasn't bringing my father back, like He did Lazarus.

This was not going to end with my father coming back in four days.

But the tomb where resurrection happened was not in room 402 of Phelps Co. Hospital.

It was in my heart. It was in the restored relationship between my father and I. In January earlier this year, I reached out to my father. I wasn't looking for a mended relationship. I just needed to get his cooperation in getting his name off of my mother's house so I could sell it. (Check out "Forget Me Nots" for the details on why, if you're interested.)

Upon dialing my father's number, I realized when I changed my number I hadn't given him the new number. When he answered, I apologized for not updating him. He responded by telling me he was in the hospital the week before, with renal failure. At some point in that stay he'd been revived after his blood pressure dropped too low. When they needed a next-of-kin, there was no number. There was no one who would have known he was gone. He then joked about how he would've died alone. And that at least "next time it happens" he had someone's number.

Even though he was joking. It was a very sobering moment for me. I wasn't there. He'd come to the conclusion I'd never be there. And he accepted the thought of dying alone. We continued to talk, outside of the context of the house. I'd come to the realization that all the things I'd held against my father were minute compared to what we had the opportunity to rebuild in that moment.

Looking back, I realized the "it wasn't through" in that worship song wasn't the experience with my father on the evening of May 14th. God was moving stones and restoring life between us since January, bringing my father back then so we could be together that night in May.

He didn't want "the one He loved" to die alone. He didn't want the other "one He loved" (me) to have the guilt of not being there. He'd restored 4 years of inconsistency with four months of relationship. Exchanging "beauty for ashes" (Isaiah 61:3), allowing me to trade the time we couldn't get back with memories we might have never had.

The stone that was rolled back was not the portal between my father's mortality and his eternity, but it was the pride that would have kept us from moving forward in the first place.