Jesus spoke sharply to the mourners.
"Why are you making all this fuss?" he asked. "The little girl isn't dead. She is only sleeping."
Everyone laughed at him, as though he were a fool. "So he doesn't know the difference between being asleep and being dead," they said to themselves. But Jesus told them to get out of the house. When they were gone he took Jairus and his wife, and the three disciples, and went into the little girl's room.
There could be no doubt about it—the girl was dead. She was lying white and cold and still. No doctor in the world could ever help her again.
Jesus bent over the still body, and opened his mouth to speak. Simon and James and John held their breath. Not many hours before, they had heard him say to the sea, "Peace, be still." When he spoke, the sea obeyed him. They heard him speak to a madman, and after he spoke the man was in his right mind again. But what use would it be to speak to someone who was dead? The dead could not hear him!
Or could they hear him? Had Jesus not once told them, "The dead hear my voice"?
The little girl did not know anything. She did not hear anything. She could not know or hear anything, for she was dead.
Then a voice came through the silence. The little girl began to hear someone talking. It was a man's voice, and it was saying the very words her mother used each morning to wake her up from sleep.
"Little girl, get up!" she heard.