God Alone: The Power to Raise
Day 1: The Power to Raise
I hung up the phone feeling helpless and sad. I wish I had some way to help her—but I didn’t. I felt her sadness and frustration—her utter dejection and hopelessness. But it was just one of those unfortunate things in life that have no remedy, no recourse, no resolution.
She was a relative who qualified for “Green Card” sponsorship by my mom under the complex and stringent rules of US immigration policy. My mother had started the process of sponsorship quite some time before, but the seemingly endless layers and levels of requirements and the assigned numerical quotas meant a wait that would stretch for years and possibly decades.
And now, a few days after my mother’s funeral, J.C. was distraught. The immigration attorney had told her that because my mother had died before the petition was approved, the sponsorship petition was also dead and buried—completely, permanently, irrevocably.
I saw J.C. not long ago, and I thought back to her painful predicament in that difficult time—that time of anxiety and uncertainty when despair and perplexity were piled on to grief. And I was reminded of our human limitations—of how much is outside our control even as we plan and work for the good of those we love.
“My soul, wait silently for God alone, For my expectation is from Him,” wrote the psalmist, David. “Surely men of low degree are a vapor, Men of high degree are a lie; If they are weighed on the scales, They are altogether lighter than vapor” (Psalm 62:5, 9 - NKJV).
David understood that in God alone can our expectation be solid, unshakeable, safely grounded. Hopes placed in mortals die with them; all the promise of their power comes to nothing (Proverbs 11:7 -NIV). The New King James translation is less general: When a wicked man dies, his expectation will perish, And the hope of the unjust perishes.
The point, though, is the same—mortals, regardless of intentions, regardless of status, regardless of power—are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes (James 4:14). But hope and expectation placed in God never perish.
Jesus comforted Mary and Martha with this reassurance as they wrestled with grief over their brother’s death. Separately, each expressed the same wistful thought, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21, 32). “I AM the resurrection and the life…” (John 11:25), He responded.
Jesus knew all the attendant issues around Mary and Martha’s grief. He was aware of everything that had died with Lazarus. He knew all the complex layers of sadness, frustration, despair, perplexity, anxiety, and fear—He knew the gamut of emotions summed up in the sisters’ heart-cry “Lord if You had been here…”
But they were to witness the resurrection power of Christ, the God who alone is the resurrection and the life. And if He has the power to raise bodies, souls, and spirits, can He not breathe life into dead dreams, hopes, plans, and lost causes?
Even tough ones like J. C.’s. With all due respect to the lawyer, death was not the last word. Years later, in spite of the numerous barriers—the near impossibility of sponsorship opportunities and the difficult and limited options—another pathway opened up for her to sponsorship and eventually to citizenship.
