Jesus Christ Blog

It may be the shortest verse in the Bible, but it is long on importance.

Jesus was at the tomb of Lazarus after Lazarus had been dead for three days and the family and friends were grieving over why their miracle-working savior could have let this happen. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” said Mary.

“When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. ‘Where have you laid him?’ he asked.

‘Come and see, Lord,’ they replied.

Jesus wept.” (John 11:32-35)

I marvel at this. Jesus knew he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead, but he still empathized with the people. I think He wept because in that moment He stepped into their shoes. He could see the hand of God, but He realized they could not.

And so He summoned strength from His Father and called Lazarus to come out of the tomb. In other words, that little scripture verse, “Jesus wept,” was quickly followed by “Lazarus, come forth!”

It occurs to me that those two statements side by side may be one way of answering tough questions like the loss of a teenager in a traffic accident due to no one’s fault but an icy road.

Perhaps part of the answer lies in these two statements. On one hand you have Christ entering into the helplessness of the human condition; on the other you have Him acting supernaturally into it.

Though God understands our helplessness — even empathizes with it — He is not bound by the same things that bind us. He can do something about it, or He may not. If He doesn’t, He has just as many reasons as to why He doesn’t, as when He does. But either way, Jesus weeps. And there is comfort in those tears.

I, on the other hand, obsess over instructions. I especially like the ones that give you an inventory of parts before you begin so you can be sure everything is there. I lay all the pieces out and notice if there are two sizes of the same thing like screws or dowels. Just because something fits doesn’t mean it’s the only thing that goes there. Then I take it step by step. I check and recheck the pictures as I go. I have to have total concentration when I do this, because sometimes deciphering these instructions is like reading another language. I actually enjoy this. My wife and son do not.

“Papa! Why are you taking so long?” This usually elicits a reaction from my wife who believes that I didn’t involve my older children enough in projects like this when they were little, and now is my chance to make that up by letting Chandler help me so that we do this thing together. She would undoubtedly believe that if I let him help me, and he ruined the whole thing in the process, it was worth it for what he learned by trying and what we built by working together. What is she thinking?

The worst is when she decides she and Chandler are going to put something together without me, and I have to watch the two of them guess at the pieces with the instructions in the bottom of the box. This is when I usually leave the room (I can’t take the suspense) and return to her gloating looks as they roll out the finished product. Marti doesn’t care about getting it right as much as she cares about spending time with her son.

I have to admit that I now believe Marti’s choices are better. God has given us his Word, which includes a lot of instructions for living that we are prone to miss sometimes. But I don’t think that getting us to live right is his ultimate goal. His goal is to have a relationship with us.