The anthology is rich in attempts of mortal man to express the inexpressibles of religious experience. One of the best is Convert Gilbert Keith Chesterton's
The Convert by Gilbert Keith Chesterton's
After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.
The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.
--Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
From the Jul 1, 1946 issue of TIME magazine;
also posted in: Wittingshire (a blogspot - "A unique blend of science, faith and lyricism (reading it is a bit like having tea with an educated, Christian hobbit)"--Gary Bourque, Both Worlds.) on Saturday, January 14, 2006 by Amanda Witt who comments:
Chesterton isn't saying that "reason" doesn't matter; he's saying that the essential point--which all too often gets forgotten in sweeping and impersonal discussions of the cosmos--is the personal, crucial fact that Christ raises the dead.
Notice, though, that the title of the poem is "convert." That means that the speaker isn't really the Lazarus of the Bible, who was friends with Jesus and wasn't, so far as we know, "converted" as we think of conversion. Instead, the speaker is someone like you or me, someone who prayed one day (the first line's "bowed my head"), and in doing so came to life.
For Christ raises the dead every day. Eventually he'll raise our physical bodies, as he raised Lazarus's, but in the meantime he ... well, he raises us to life. He takes our blinders off. He wakes us up.
Yes, we still flail around quite a bit; we still stumble; we still suffer all the painful and peculiar vagaries of life. But we do so as living, wakeful people, not as sleepwalkers.
Like Lazarus, we have known the inside of the tomb, and been brought out into the light.
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...regarding trust and Lazarus...
In his book, "Expect a Miracle, But Trust in Jesus", Pastor Adrian
Rogers puts a nice spin on this very story. The original Greek tells us that
our paralytic friend was lying on a krabbatos, which one scholar describes as "a
poor man’s ‘couch’ or ‘bed.’ The rude pallet," he writes, "on which the man lay
was probably little more than a grass mat or a padded quilt." As Rogers tells
it, we've got four men at the four corners carrying that bed. But partway into
the trip, the paralytic man moans in despair, "Let's forget this. Turn around.
It'll never work. No way can Jesus heal me."
And the guy carrying the
first corner says to him, "Of course He can! Look at me. The grace and power of
Jesus is amazing, because I once was blind, but now I see."
"I know," the
sick man says, "but that was just your eyes. My whole body is out of whack."
Well, the four guys override his vote and they go a bit further, but then he
hits the brakes again. "We're wasting our time," he sighs. "Go home. Just let me
die."
And the second man tries to perk him up. "Come on," he says. "I
used to have a withered arm. It was useless, man. And now look at it. I can
carry you clear through Capernaum, uphill, both ways, and not break a sweat.
Jesus did that."
"True," grumps the paralytic, "but that was just one
arm. I've got two bad arms, two bad legs, two bad eyes, two bad everythings. My
entire body is fritzed out. Why go on? Let's quit."
But they go another
half a kilometer before the sighing and crying starts up again. "Turn around.
Hang it up. Do a U-turn. Jesus can't help me." And now the third man takes a
crack at it: "Don't talk that way," he scolds. "Look at me. I was stone deaf. I
couldn't hear a 747 taking off. But Jesus touched my ears and now I have 20-20
hearing."
"No, no," the sad little man says. "I don't think Jesus did
heal your ears, ‘cause you're not hearing me. You just had two bad ears. I'm
wiped out from head to toe. Even my hair hurts. There's no way Jesus can make me
well."
And finally, the fourth man, who's been listening to this dribble
for just about long enough, drops the bed down in the dust of Capernaum and
shouts at his friend: "HEY! Guess what, bud? My name is Lazarus, and I used to
be DEAD! Trust me, Jesus can make you well! No problem! Now shut up and let's
get going!"
And Pastor Rogers, with a smile in his pen or word
processor, summarizes with three words: "End of discussion!"
You know,
friend, we need to keep this in mind at all times. Do you think that Jesus can't
take care of your problems? Don't forget that He brought Lazarus out of the
tomb. Do you have it in your mind that He simply cannot help you cope with the
pressures at work, or the problems that your kid is facing in high school? Don't
lose sight of the fact that a man who had been in the grave for four days, who
was decomposing, who had registered zero on the EKG machine for 96 hours, just
came walking out of his own grave and said, "Hey, everybody, how’re you doing?"
to the astonished crowd standing there. That's what Jesus could do 2000 years
ago, and that's what He can do for you right now..."
