July 29 Prayer

John 11:19-27
Jesus tells Martha who had come to meet him on the road in her grief that Lazarus her brother will rise again after his death. She knows her brother will live again in the afterlife but Jesus speaks of another realm . He opens her eyes to see that he actually is the resurrection and life.
If we believe in him then we will live and never die- ever.
‘Do you believe this?’ he asks Martha.
This is where her proclamation of faith rises, ‘Yes, Lord, I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the One who is coming into the world’

Sit with the image of Jesus and Martha having a conversation together.
What do their faces look like and how are they looking at each other?

When we are in grief our true raw selves are exposed as we cannot hold that part of our broken hearts together. We say what we think inside.
This is where Jesus appears with us in our true feelings and questions.
‘If only you had been there’ Martha shares with her friend, Jesus.
You can feel her anguish in her honest questioning.
He then asks her,do you believe this?
And she comes to believe and understand who he really is,so much more than she ever thought possible.

He asks us the same.
Do you believe this?

How does he want to come into the world as life where we are dying?
Can we come to him now with our honest questions and in our grief to grow in our understanding to believe He is the One?

Pause here to offer your complete self to God and give him your questions and grief of what could have been but is not yet.

‘ Lord, we thank you that you chose to reveal yourself through Jesus the One and only One that brings life into the world.
We receive this life in us now to believe in what seems impossible to us.
May we come to believe in your resurrected power giving life where we only see death.
May we have open eyes to see what you are doing in the waiting time.
May our faith grow in expectation of the life that you are pouring into us that will be extended into the world around us.
We give you our hands as your hands. To be with you as you are entering our world each day.
Gracious God, through our faith and friendship with Jesus, join us to one another in love.
We welcome You into our homes as Martha did to be with us.
May your church be the place where faith rises and proclaims who you are, the anointed one revealing the way to the Father through the spirit of hope.
We lift up all of those that are suffering in grief today that the comfort of the Holy Spirit may be present to them.
We receive your faith, hope and love this day.
Amen