On #wakeupolive

Earlier this month, there were many people praying for a two-year-old who died suddenly to be resurrected. She did not come back to life, and the more than 3,500 Instagram posts with the hashtag #wakeupolive and a smattering of articles have talked about all sides of the matter. 

Criticism and solidarity are threaded through these responses, which discuss the theology behind resurrection; the doctrine of Bethel Church where where the girl’s mother is a well-known worship leader, and how the many people with a chronic illness or terminal diagnosis navigate calls for healing that do not materialize. 

I, too, prayed for a modern day resurrection. I knew it would probably not happen, but I chose to pray anyway. Because if God is real, and God is good, then God can do what God wants to do. And who wouldn’t want to see God do a profound miracle today?

How would resurrection look on social media? Could a post-miracle baby have been a polarizing lightning rod, with some factions of the church declaring miracles don’t happen, while others stood on the other side of the line? Would it be called a fake news-inspired “hoax” or “sham” and be discounted? Would there have been swarms of news cameras around the family’s house, trying to film the resurrected child? But after the cameras left, would the hype have mattered? Because these parents would have their child back.

Social media can unify us to collectively pray, but there is also a danger: An Instagram campaign can quickly feel like a petition to God—maybe if we can gather enough “likes”, God will act. Is more pleading and intercession by more people a way to better get God’s attention? 

This toddler’s not being brought back to life leads to a bigger threat: that many people who joined in prayer for her resurrection, being disappointed, will experience doubt and bitterness. There is a danger that Olive’s not awakening could feed into a larger framework of people who have left the church because God has been silent, or have been swept into misleading theology about healing. 

Yet after the funeral, I also think we can find a new hope: that God could be quietly bringing Christians together around the clarifying unity that comes after intense prayer. For example, we know from history that revival has been preceded by travailing prayer, like in Wales in the 1900s.

I’ve read several social media posts and comments from people praying for Olive’s resurrection that are also asking for an awakening of their hearts. That through prayer for this toddler, their life with God would experience a new sort of resurrection. When you cut through questionable theology, pain, and confusion experienced by the many of us that are not healed — and any media spectacle — I wonder: could the spirit be creating fresh unity in this season that catches on and builds? 

I’d always imagined that if I see healing, let alone resurrection, it will happen in relative obscurity. For a season, Jesus was not ready to minister publicly, telling the leper he healed to not speak about what happened to anyone. Could we theologically be in a season of quiet healings in places where the Gospel is emerging?

As we grow and pray for God’s will to be done, it means giving ourselves over completely to the fact that God may not prevent hardship: children dying, war, natural disasters. We don’t know what we’ve been spared or how prayers have prevented tragedies, but we know a lot of terrible things have happened and will keep happening. God created the world and gave us free will, which is beautiful and in our human hands, deeply damaging. That’s the mystery of the story.

But in the end, #wakeupolive is an invitation for a resurrection of the heart. This situation is also a call for us to grow into a spiritual maturity that understands when God does not act, no matter how many people are asking, it is not because God is unkind, distant, or unable. It is because God’s will wasn’t centered around the act of resurrection.  

Growing up I heard a lot about “God’s will” and connected it to a magic genie God or saw it as tool to explain away pain. I tuned the phrase out for many years. It is only in recent years, praying through anxiety or hardship, that I’m learning how praying not for the positive outcome, but instead for God to do what is willed, is the harder and better choice. I’m learning how God’s will is not an excuse, or something that we use as a tool of self-protection or justification: “It wasn’t God’s will I got the job.” Maybe, you weren’t the best candidate. Or “I’m called to move to New York” when maybe it is practically too expensive and there is no housing. 

There’s a line in the Jane’s Addiction song “Jane Says”  — it doesn’t matter if you know it or not, just go with me here — “Jane says she’s going away to Spain when she gets her money saved. She’s going to start tomorrow.” Jane is in crisis in the song. She is not in a practical place to move, she has not planned. She is probably an addict and needs to get better first. 

Not to take an analogy about a 90s college rock song too far here, but in a Christian framework Jane would sit in discernment, maybe in a clearness committee, to listen for God’s will. She’d listen to her body — does it rise or fall at the idea of the move. Maybe she would fast. Maybe she would go on a silent retreat. In other words, she’d take time. God’s will emerges when we give it an uncomfortable amount of room. Our discernment to stay in Seattle took almost two years, but it has been affirmed repeatedly since. 

But when parents are grieving for their toddler and holding onto hope, there is no room or space for clearness committees. Sometimes, we’re called to act in faith and ask.

I for one never want to give up on asking in full faith for God to act. But I want to ask while holding the question of what would happen, with a lens of pastoral care, if God is silent.

If God does not act, our faith may be vulnerable — our hearts may turn a little counterclockwise and we may begin to experience spiritual disorientation. 

Disappointment and heartbreak are not the same as a season of desolation — a hollowness of the spirit when God is quiet. Rather the disappointment of God not acting — healing, interceding, or even resurrecting — can confuse God’s will with God’s goodness. It’s a danger zone where a single experience of God not interceding after earnest and beautiful asking blooms into spiritual crisis and alienation. 

I for one am going to persist in asking to see God’s goodness in the land of the living. But I’m going to try to orient my spirit towards God’s will. This posture hurts, but it is truly vulnerable and expectant. It’s centered on God’s way, and not the particular ask.