Challenged to leave our comfort zones

In today’s first reading, Acts 9: 31-34, Peter invites Aeneas, a  paralytic for eight years, to get up and make his bed!  He immediately is healed by Peter’s faith  in the Risen Lord.  People hear that Peter is not that far away from Joppa, where Tabitha, a highly respected woman, has died. Peter  goes to Joppa and finds people wailing, deeply saddened by the loss of Tabitha, a person who reached out to the poor in the area. Her generosity, her love, her commitment to be of service in whatever way possible was well  known.  Peter goes up to the room where the dead body is laid out, asks everyone to leave the room, kneels down in prayer, and then, believing in the power of the Risen Lord to do the impossible, humanly speaking,  turns to the body and says to Tabitha: Rise, get up. He then presents her alive to those who were grieving her loss.

Many times you and I are like the two people in today’s first reading. Parts of us may be  impaired, lying dormant “in bed,” where we feel safe, comfortable, and unchallenged. Other parts of us may be “dead” and need to be raised to new life.  Nothing is impossible to God, as Peter’s faith in the Risen Lord reveals. 

Right now,  it is springtime. All of nature is coming alive, leaving its dormant state, rising from what looks like death to the naked eye.  We see the power of the Lord’s  resurrection in the tiny seeds that bear flowers, brilliant pink and white blossoms. We see God’s  creativity also in the night sky when billions of stars appear.

The transformation of Aeneas, of Tabitha, of nature are testimony of our Creator’s ability to transform our lives as well. Whether any one of us is in the springtime, the summertime, the fall time, the wintertime of our lives, God has the power to bring forth new life, to do what needs to be done at any moment to bring life out of death, mobility out of immobility, to get the “Aeneas” part of ourselves “out of bed” and the “Tabitha” part of ourselves to a resurrected state in which the good we are meant to do continues to be realized by our renewed efforts.