Jesus arrived four days after Lazarus died. Martha pointed out that by now the body would smell. From every practical standpoint, the situation was past help. But Jesus stood at the tomb and called his name — and Lazarus came out. Still wrapped in grave clothes, still bound, but alive. Jesus then said something worth noticing: "Loose him, and let him go." The resurrection was Jesus's work. The unwrapping was the community's job.

That detail matters. A lot of people come to faith — experience something real, genuinely new — but then keep walking around bound in the old grave clothes. Old habits, old thought patterns, old identities that no longer fit but are hard to get off. The resurrection happened, but the unwrapping is a process. And it often happens in community — other people helping to remove what death left behind.

There is also something worth sitting with in the fact that Jesus waited. He could have come before Lazarus died. He didn't. He told His disciples plainly that He had waited so that they might believe. The delay was not indifference — it was strategy. Sometimes God allows things to go further than we think they should, not because He has lost track of us, but because what He is about to do will be more clearly His work than if He had intervened earlier. Lazarus in a tomb for four days leaves no room for any other explanation. When he walked out, everyone knew what had happened. That is the kind of story God sometimes writes — the kind where there is no natural explanation for the outcome.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, call our names the way You called Lazarus. Where we have been lying still in what felt like a sealed tomb, roll the stone away. And send people to help us with the grave clothes. Amen.