Nancy and I talk quite a bit. We walk and talk. We text. We tweet. We email.

Sometimes, when we are out for supper, we probably look like the couples who never talk. We eat. We listen. We look sideways at the people who are talking loudly at adjacent tables. We feel no need to perform.

Sometimes, however, we do talk in front of other people so they can hear us talk, so they know how we interact. There have been times when we’ve been with our kids that we have made sure that we have talked and laughed and even kissed. It hasn’t been made up, it’s not pretend. It’s the public version of a deep private relationship, with an awareness that there is an audience and an awareness that the audience shapes the conversation and, perhaps more importantly, is shaped by the conversation.

Jesus is standing outside the tomb where Lazarus’ body is. He looked up and said,

“Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

Jesus was, for the people listening, establishing that there was a relationship. He acknowledges that they talk all the time. He wants everyone to be sure that what is going to follow, the emergence of Lazarus, is clearly rooted in the conversational relationship he has with his father. It can’t be his own power. It can’t be a coincidence. It needs to be that Jesus made a seemingly heretical claim, and instead of being struck by lightening, Lazarus is struck by life.

Maybe like Jesus,  just as I  “public talk” with Nancy, I need to “public talk” with God.

Maybe life would strike twice.