The first person I ever saw die passed away in a hospital bed after a long battle with cancer. I worked a summer job at a hospital, and the nursing director needed a member of the staff present in the room when the patient expired. I stayed in the background during this intimate family moment, watching for the final breath.

When the man died I knew it and the family knew it. I passed the word to the nurse who checked to be sure, and a doctor entered in a few minutes and confirmed the death. Me, the family members, and the medical professionals all clearly recognized that this body once animated by life now lay sunken in death.

When Jesus walked into a house to heal a little girl who clearly died, he scolded the mourners—stop wailing, she is not dead but asleep. These people knew a dead body when they saw one. Their response to this clueless stranger? They laughed at him, knowing that she was dead.

They were right—she was dead. Until Jesus took the hand of the little girl and said, My child, get up! And amazingly, astoundingly, unbelievably, her spirit returned and she stood up. Jesus ordered the astonished parents to tell no one. But those loud mourners in the other room told everyone. No one could have shut me up had I seen that once-dead-now-alive little girl skip from that room.

Jesus says the same words to us—My child, get up! Have you heard them lately? He repeats them over and over. First when we were dead in sin, and again when life beats our spirits out of us. Jesus offers to take our hand and lift us from beds of death. New life awaits.

It doesn’t matter if those around us laugh at Jesus or don’t believe in Jesus. That little girl believes, and her parents believe, and their obnoxious neighbors believe. Billions more do so as well. Let their stories encourage us to turn to Jesus with the simple prayer—Jesus, help me get up.

Luke 8 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Frederic Köberl

John the Baptist sat in a prison cell increasingly depressed. His energetic preaching, spurred on the the Spirit of God, and the crowds pushing on the banks of the Jordan for baptism seemed so far away. Knowing he might never leave this hole, John wondered if his life’s work meant anything at all.

So John sent messengers to Jesus to ask, are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?

John baptized Jesus and heard the stories about Jesus. But John sat in jail while Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead. John saw none of this for himself. John, the precursor of Jesus, the one of whom Jesus said, among those born of women there is no one greater than John, never saw with his own eyes the miracles of Jesus. Instead, John lay in filth and darkness and doubt.

I love the way Jesus answered John’s emissaries: Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.

Jesus referenced familiar passages from the book of Isaiah pointing to the Messiah, words John knew by heart. Who knows, perhaps the cousins learned these promises together as boys, or maybe they had discussed them late into the night under the stars? I have a feeling these were the exact words John hoped to hear.

Regardless, Jesus comforted John with the only message he and the world and all of us need to hear—indeed, the Messiah has come.

Luke 7 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Spencer Tamichi

I find restaurants who claim they’re hip because they break all the rules super annoying. I mean, can I really break all the rules? Might I order filet mignon after filet mignon and walk out without paying? Could I build a small fire pit on my table and roast my meat myself? What if I dined in my underwear? As you can see, this concept totally bugs me.

Which perhaps is how the Pharisees felt when sitting with Jesus in a synagogue one fine morning, watching like hawks to see if he would heal someone on the Sabbath. Jesus, in the sometimes you got to break the rules mode, blatantly did just that.

A man was there whose right hand was shriveled…Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?”

The crowd sat silent. Jesus looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored.

This healing on the Sabbath created massive animosity among the Pharisees and led to their destruction of Jesus. It seems odd to me that Jesus did no work here at all, but simply spoke and the man’s hand healed itself. But rivalries were afoot, and a healing created a good pretext for violence (which is a strange thought in itself).

The bigger issue involved Jesus’s earlier statement: The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. The religious authorities rejected the idea that Jesus might represent the Lord—or actually be God in the flesh—and that Jesus created the whole Sabbath idea and could bend it as he wished. This represented a stunning claim, one many refused to contemplate. Not sure if I could have either.

Can a person really break all the rules? Not me or you, but with Jesus it appears that an entirely different set of rules apply.

Luke 6 & Mark 3 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Jonathan Stout