The God Who Grieves

Today I’m out at Riversong (Mom & Dad’s), as our home is shown as an Open House today.  It’s a sweet retreat, and we all agree that it’s way more fun now that we all don’t live together. 🙂  Really, in the best sense, it feels like a treat to be out in the boonies, Dutch is like a kid in a candy store playing with Oma and Papa, and Jeff and I are getting some much needed studying done.

So I’m studying for the retreat, and struck by the shortest verse in the Bible, one that I’ve always marveled at, but see again for the first time today.  John 11:35, “Jesus wept.”  Lazarus is dead. Mary and Martha have placed all their hope in Jesus to come heal Lazarus, and instead He wastes his time (it seems) and shows up 4 days too late and all hope is lost. Lazarus is dead. Now Jesus, who deliberately disappointed these women by delaying His arrival (more on this later), already knows that He will soon raise Lazarus from the dead. But what does He does first?  Does he say, “Silly ladies! Can’t you just trust me? I’ll raise him up. Settle down and quit crying!”  No.  “He groaned in His spirit and was troubled.”  And then: “Jesus wept.”

I have alread asserted that God deliberately disappoints us. But here is the remarkable truth:  If we think that God is aloofly and distantly watching our pain from afar, we are tragically wrong.  That is not the God we serve.  The God we serve and love and worship chooses to experience every ounce of pain that we experience, with us.  If you are hurting, God is hurting with you.   God weeps with you.  God has wept with me.  He wept with them.  He weeps with you.  If God chooses to disappoint us, allow us to hurt, send us through the fire of tragedy and pain, He goes through it with us.  He weeps with us.  This is the God we serve.  He is the God who grieves.