JESUS SPEAKING
When he arrived at the house of Jarus, he did not let anyone go in with him except Peter, John and James, and the child’s father and mother. Meanwhile, all the people were wailing and mourning for her. “Stop wailing,” Jesus said. “She is not dead but asleep.”
They laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. But he took her by the hand and said, “My child, get up!” Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up. Then Jesus told them to give her something to eat. Her parents were astonished, but he ordered them not to tell anyone what had happened.
INSPIRED THOUGHTS
Do you believe in miracles, or do you laugh just like those who were morning laughed at Jesus? What miracles are going on around each and every one of us right now? We are currently hurtling through space at 67,000 miles per hour, on a round globe that circles a sun 1 million times its size. (Huge asteroids can crash in to the earth at any time.) We circle at exactly the right distance so that we are not burned alive, and we are not frozen solid. As the earth hurtles, the moon stabilizes it’s rotation in just such a way so as to make the weather mild enough for living things. The earth’s core rotates in such a way as to deflect deadly radiation away from you and me. The astronauts have not been able to shoot off to discover another planet because this radiation will kill them if they leave the earth’s protective barrier. This globe is peopled with creatures of unique character. Every creature has within it, a code, we know as DNA. The DNA from a single person’s body would fit into two table spoons if it was stripped out. The information in those spoons is so complex, that if it was written down in books, you could fill the Grand Canyon with them. If this information from just one human being was unraveled, it would stretch back and forth from the earth to the moon and back…Five million times. One tree has enough atomic energy in it to power the entire United States for one whole year; atomic energy comes from the splitting apart of atoms; strangely enough though, there is nothing identifiable that is holding them together to begin with…I know it is God; he holds everything together. There are spiders that spin webs that resemble a parachute, and the wind carries them up higher than where 747’s fly. These little spiders have populated the globe using their unique webs, as they were designed by God to do. There is a seed in South America that can sit around for 1000 years, and all that seed needs is water and dirt, and after all that time, it will grow. If all of the worms on this planet suddenly died, so would most of the plants, because the worms ventilate the soil, as God has designed them to do. The honey bees’ brain calculates over a billion calculations per second, and the space shuttle’s computer, so big and bulky only calculates in the millions. A woman’s womb, barren and empty, brings forth new people each and every day, from something that begins as nothing bigger than the period at the end of this sentence [.] In that period is all of the information to build a machine that contains millions to billons of cells, each cell more complex than the computer on which you are reading these words right now. One woman however, a virgin, whose womb was barren, brought forth someone over two thousand years ago who revealed the reason for all of these miracles. His name is Jesus Christ. In this scripture, that man raised a little girl from the dead. Does this seem any more impossible than the other miracles I’ve mentioned?
The impossible is scoffed at by those who are under the illusion that they are in control, and who are not very perceptive or observant of their surroundings. These types of people laughed at Jesus in this scripture because he told them that the little girl was not dead, but sleeping. He was about to accomplish something that was beyond their’ comprehension. Yet Jesus didn’t do this miracle for the purposes of proving God’s power to anyone. He told them not to tell anyone; so if this wasn’t to glorify God (although it did) what was the purpose? The purpose was to reunite a Father and mother with the daughter they loved. Compassion is the miracle. Jesus came to reveal to us the heart of God. Is God a God who sits on a throne and sees human beings as insignificant? Or does He care? Jesus reveals that God is loving; He is willing to forgive, He is concerned with the relationships between fathers and mothers and their children. God, the eternal Father, and creator and guiding force of all of creation, is concerned about the personal relationships you and I have with one another. He feels our pain, and he knows our trouble, and his heart is filled with compassion. The compassion of God is what is so miraculous in this story. In a sea of impossible things, God decided to make his love for us, the miracle he wanted us to focus on the most.
Who is God to you? Do you realize that He cares for you, and He loves you like a child; like Christ loved this little girl? God desires that we be just as compassionate and loving as He is. We are to emulate Jesus Christ. His concern for a Father, a mother, and a child shows us that God is isn’t just all powerful, he is all loving, and all compassionate. He wants to be reconciled to those we love, and to those he desires us to love. So let’s be filled with compassion as we go out to minister to others. Let’s see the world with God’s eyes, and let’s love others with His heart.
“Lord Father, Lord Jesus Christ, we come before You humbled, and we truly want to know more about who You are, and we ask that You will not deny us when we wish to draw nearer to You. Father, we love You, we love Your Son, and we want to be like Him, and we want to be like You; help us to be Your servants. Help us Lord to be more like You. We thank You, we praise You and we love You and we ask all of these things in Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.” God bless all of you.
Jesus Speaks 