Was Lazarus truly buried?

Of course he was put in a tomb. But according to tradition, the embalming process took a full forty days Gen. 50:3. If he was only in the tomb 3 days from his death, was he embalmed? If not, why not?

Near Miss

11/16/07Well, isn’t life interesting. Has your body ever tried to tell you something and you just didn’t listen. For months, I have been stressing out trying to keep a company on the brink of bankruptcy afloat. All along, my life habits were deteriorating. Too few, too large meals of the wrong foods and no exercise. As time went on, I just didn’t feel right. Naturally, I chalked it all up to stress. Then it happened. I had managed to slow down my personal life to allow me more time to rest away from work. So one Saturday, we had breakfast very late, played a few rounds of scrabble, and later had some vegetable soup for dinner. The kids were asleep when the missus and I settled in for a movie. As the movie started so did my usual heartburn. I fetched some Tums and started munching on them and sipping water. About an hour later, I started having this anxious feeling in my chest on top of the heartburn. For as long as I can remember, I have had what is called PVCs, premature ventricular contractions. Every once in a while, the lower half of my heart beats out of sync with the upper part. It feels kind of like a hand reaching in and giving your heart a little squeeze, not painful, just unsettling. I have had a battery of test done and was assured that it wasn’t anything to worry about. Well that Saturday night, I started to worry. That feeling I get when I experience a PVC was happening, only it didn’t stop. I casually went upstairs and got the stethoscope (doesn’t everyone have one)? My goodness, my heart was beating 140 beats per minute, and that was lying down. Curiously, there was no pain at all, except the heartburn which was going away. I let my wife listen and her face turned ashen. After deliberating for a few minutes, I agreed to go to the hospital. To be honest, it wasn’t the going to the hospital that bothered me, it was dragging my kids there at 11:30 at night that bothered me more than anything. I remember being afraid. I was afraid that while everyone was screwing around, my heart would just decide to take the day off. I was afraid of the inevitable impact of a fatherless household on the development of my girls. But seriously, I did not have this feeling of unfinished business. That’s what bothers me the most. In those moments of uncertainty where you don’t have sufficient information to know you are not dying, to not feel desperately like you need to finish something seems beyond sad.Don’t get me wrong, I would miss my children and they would miss me. My wife would be shaken. But I have always known that she is so incredibly charming and loving that after a time, she would easily find love again. Once I got wired up, they figured out that I was experiencing atrial fibrillation, which is ironic because I had just watched a PBS show about it a week before. There’s something for the psycho-somatic crowd to talk about. Atrial fibrillation, or a-fib, is when the electrical impulses in your heart don’t follow their normal chain of events. Normally, the small upper chambers contract, then the lower ones. Sometimes the signal gets scrambled in one of the upper chambers (atriums). As a result, that chamber just quivers like Jello on a dashboard. The rest of the heart is working overtime to make up for the lack of efficiency. I remember laying there worrying about my children sleeping in another ER room across the hall. Pam had gone to get the two oldest and brought them in. After they were there for just a couple minutes, the monitor showed my heart rate going down fast. It went from 112 beats per minute to 39 and was still slowing. I really thought this was lights out. I was panicking trying to signal my wife to get the kids out without scaring them. No kid should have to watch their father die before their eyes. She finally got the hint and scurried them out. Fortunately, things leveled out again. But that was creepy.Now that I am out of the hospital, the afib has stopped and my heart is back to what is called normal sinus rhythm. I am on meds to keep my heart rate down and feel just fine. Life has changed though; More trips to the gym, more smaller meals, no trans fat, no sugar, far less starch. Now all I need to do is find a job where I don’t work for a jerk and I’m on easy street.