Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Our reading titled Seven Minutes of Terror was written by Dave Brannon.

When the Mars rover, Perseverance, landed on that red planet on February 18th, 2021.

Those monitoring its arrival endured seven minutes of terror.

As the spacecraft ended its 292 million mile journey,

it went through a complex landing procedure.

It had to do on its own.

Signals from Mars to Earth take several

minutes, so NASA couldn't hear from perseverance during the landing. Not being in contact

was frightening for the team who had put so much effort and resources into the mission.

Sometimes we may experience our own times of fear when we feel we're not hearing from God.

We pray, but we don't get answers.

In Scripture, we find people getting answers to prayer quickly and those not getting answers

for a long time.

Perhaps the most poignant example of a delayed answer,

one that surely struck terror in the hearts of Mary and Martha, was when they asked Jesus to help their sick brother Lazarus. Jesus delayed, and their brother died. Yet four days later, Christ answered by resurrecting Lazarus.

Waiting for answers to our prayers can be difficult.

But God can comfort and help us as we approach his throne of grace with confidence,

that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from John chapter 11 verses 38 through 43.

Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb.

It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. Take away the stone, he said.

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