Lord. He Stinks

John 11:38-42

Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.”  When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Lord… He stinks!

Hindered in grave clothes and head wraps, Lazarus walked out of his casket and into a new life. Permanently dead and rotting away, Jesus simply called him to life. I wonder…did the smell of death still linger on him and his clothes? Did the regeneration of his body immediately eliminate the stench of a four-day-dead body? Did it take a while for the air to clear in and around the Spirit-breathed form of the man called Lazarus?

How about me? Does this regenerated man still waft an odor of death? Do the old ways still linger and stink. Probably. But I can’t deny that this once dead man has been resuscitated by God and called to new life.