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Weighing a Miracle (Silent Spaces)
Weighing a Miracle reimagines the story of Lazarus through Caleb, a man of logic whose belief in absolutes is shaken by a divine event he cannot explain. What inspired you to retell one of the most well-known moments from the Bible?
What inspired me for this story is a sermon I heard titled “There’s a Revival in the Graveyard.” The thought came to me about the reaction Lazarus must have gotten from the people that knew him, and attended his funeral. I wanted to capture the look on their face(s) when they saw him alive. In my mind I thought ‘that’s an interesting concept’ and I left it at that. But the thought would not leave me. I carried that thought for a week and it was burning in my mind. Finally, I decided to outline a story out of the biblical account just to see what it would look like. As I finished the outline, I started writing the first draft and couldn’t stop until I was done. The rest is history and here we are.
How closely did you adhere to the biblical account, and where did you feel free to imagine or expand?
That’s a good question and I am glad you asked. There are some stories in the bible that give a lot of detail. Stories that have a lot of meat on their bones. Then there are stories that don’t even give you the name(s) of the main characters in the story. What I like to do is to make the unnamed characters come alive by bolstering their lives with more detail. The bible stories that have unnamed characters and such, I give them names and also a history if possible. My goal is to make the original story more vivid by supplying the missing detail. And at the same time, I don’t want to ‘bend’ the original account of the story by altering the known facts about the story. So, instead of changing the original story, I enhance it with the missing details that make a good story better.
Were there scenes you found especially difficult to write because of their spiritual or emotional gravity?
No, I don’t think so. With my philosophy of keeping the original story intact and just retelling it with more ‘meat on the bones,’ I don’t find any of that difficult. I just want to make good stories better.
What do you hope readers who are uncertain or skeptical about faith take away from Caleb’s journey?
I hope to inspire people to persevere when the trying of their faith comes along. Keeping the faith is paramount. Especially in the face of adverse conditions.
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Caleb ben Josiah has built his life on certainty — on weights that balance, contracts that hold, and truths that can be measured.
When his closest friend Lazarus dies, Caleb does what he does best: he steps in to manage the practical realities of loss for the grieving family. He expects grief. He expects finality.
He does not expect the tomb to be found empty.
And he certainly does not expect Lazarus himself to appear at his door — alive.
Now the careful merchant faces a reality that shatters every ledger he has ever kept. As grief, memory, and impossible evidence collide, Caleb must confront the one question his scales were never meant to answer:
What do you do when the world you trusted no longer adds up?
Weighing a Miracle is a quiet, introspective reimagining of one of the most famous moments in Scripture — told through the eyes of a man who measures everything, and suddenly can measure nothing at all.
A Silent Spaces Story
