Easter Books

“Lazarus Saturday: The Longest Way by Stewart Stafford

'Lazarus, come out!’ said Jesus:
A dead man awoke in a burial place,
wrapped head to foot on a stretcher;
He shook the cloth away from his face.

Four days dead; his soul had gone.
Tongues lashed the Saviour’s tardy arrival.
The Lord, resolute, could overrule death —
From the afterlife came his survival.

From white-light end to darkest revival,
life surging back into decomposing flesh.
His chest burned as it rose and fell,
bloated and blotchy skin, alive afresh.

Lazarus struggled to breathe the dusty air;
His body was freezing, deathly pale.
At first, he thought he had gone to God;
Until his friend parted the ultimate veil.

Shuffling stiffly toward the cave mouth,
newborn-blind to this second life,
The Disciples rushed to unwrap him,
His sisters embraced him as a bachelor's wife.

Lazarus longed to tell what he had seen,
forbidden to impart it to mortal ears.
No one questioned his silent burden —
The aged expression of Methuselah’s years.

Yet from that day, he walked without a smile,
The Void still echoing behind his eyes;
A living witness to what none should see,
Some resurrections come at too high a price.

The word spread fast of this divine act,
Of the Nazarene’s immense power;
That his reach could extend so far,
Beyond the ruins of the Babel Tower.

As the daughter of Jairus herself revived,
And Christ himself would rise on the third day,
Lazarus survived Death’s tightest grip —
A ransom no earthly king could ever pay.

All rights reserved. © 2024 Stewart Stafford (Revised 2026)”
― Stewart Stafford