The Command Reaches Where You Are

"And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth." Lazarus was not standing at the door waiting. He was in the tomb — wrapped, sealed, four days gone. Yet the command of Jesus did not require Lazarus to first get himself ready or find his way toward the light. The word reached him exactly where he lay. This is the pastoral observation worth sitting with this morning: God's call does not assume a better version of you. It finds the actual you — tired, stuck, or simply far from where you meant to be. The voice that woke the dead does not wait for you to become responsive before it speaks. Your only participation in that moment was coming out. Not healing yourself. Not explaining the tomb. Just moving toward the voice that had already done the decisive work. The command arrived first. Your response was simply the evidence that it had. — Narrow Highway devotional, 2026-06-15