“Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazrus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”
I read the story of Lazrus the other day and there was so much that stood out to me, but most particularly this verse. You can tell John dropped it in there knowing it would make the reader sit up in his seat. Jesus loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus so…. You think it would say, “So, he rushed to be there and keep Lazarus from dying. But it doesn’t it says, “So, he delayed. Because He loved them, He delayed.
If love is desiring someone’s highest good, John is saying that it was Lazarus’s highest good…to die.
Sometimes, it feels like God’s delays are not love, but death. Sometimes, we don’t understand how he can still be good when our hopes lie buried or we suffer in this life. The crowd expressed these doubts. “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” And you know what? The answer was “yes.” Jesus could have kept Lazarus from dying, but he deliberately chose not to. It was better not to.
His love doesn’t always make sense to us.
And yet…we can trust Him. Why? Because Jesus stood before our grave and decided to go in. He looked at the hold death had on us and traded places to free us.
Martha, who kind of gets a bad rap, makes a beautiful confession of faith in Christ even while her brother’s body was still in the grave. “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God.” She believed…even if…even though…
We can make the same confession. We can trust even when his love feels like death because we know Him. And we know that in Him, resurrection always waits on the other side.
The Motherhood Marathon 