Emma Miles writes:

In John 11, Mary and Martha, in sadness and grief, ask Jesus the same question when their brother dies.

‘Could you not have prevented this Jesus?

‘If you were here Jesus, our brother would not have died’.

A statement in my devotional jumped out at me the other day ‘what we often hope for from God is prevention, in the face of the brokenness of this world, we so want to be spared. Yet for reasons beyond our grasp, God chooses not to major in prevention. God opts for something stronger than prevention; ‘Redemption’.

In the hands of Jesus, our suffering is not meaningless. The very pain, grief, and sorrow we experience, is somehow redeemed.

And without Jesus, we simply get stuck.

The places of incredible loss become something incredibly beautiful in His hands.

Isaiah 53 prophetically points to a God who is connected to human suffering and not distant from it. He does not merely observe it from afar. He walks with us through it. His own suffering on the cross reveals to us that we are not alone, He is acquainted with grief. He took the full weight of sin, death and suffering upon himself. There is not one part of the human experience of pain that Jesus does not know about.

And because of this Jesus knows how to comfort and accompany us through our pain.

The comfort and empathic nature of Jesus brings us to the place of healing, hope, and transformation.

And the glory of the resurrection makes redemption possible for all who trust in him.

 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

Martha is holding grief and hope in tension.

Through the psalms we read honest expressions of pain. The pouring out of pain and grief is a healthy human response. To acknowledge the pain and validate the reality of grief before Jesus is a freedom work.

 Biblical lament means we also remember the hope of God, His unfailing goodness, His resurrection power, and His promise to redeem. We express our sorrow in relationship to God.

We live in the holy tension of grief and hope. Our journeys of faith are not the absence of grief but the presence of hope within it.

The grieving of Martha and Mary moves Jesus.

The passage says He was deeply moved in His spirit, He was troubled, and He wept.

Author Brian Zahnd says Why was Jesus so upset. He knew He was going to resurrect His friend days before He arrived in Bethany. Perhaps Jesus was weeping for the billions of times people gather at a grave and shed bitter tears. Jesus fully entered into the greatest sorrows of the human race.

 Jesus tells Mary and Martha, if they believe, they will see the glory of God. He then calls Lazarus back to the land of the living.

Lazarus’ resurrection prefigures Jesus’ own resurrection and the hope for all believers.

The glory of God is seen in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the victory of redemption is lived out in those who trust in Him.

The glory of God is seen in the redeeming power of God to bring beauty out of the ashes of suffering and grief.

Emma Miles – Community Development Leader:  Love Westhill writes: